Eleven years ago, President George W. Bush nominated a former energy industry attorney to oversee air pollution in America. Bill Wehrum was a controversial choice to lead the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Air and Radiation, for he had been paid for years by the chemical and utility industries that he would now be responsible for regulating. Resistance in the Republican-controlled Senate eventually forced Bush to withdraw the nomination, and Wehrum has been providing legal defense for fossil fuel companies ever since; he’s sued the EPA on behalf of industry interests 31 times since 2008.

This year, a new Republican president took interest in Wehrum—for the very same position. But the result was different. After a confirmation hearing where Wehrum feigned ignorance of basic climate science and ecology, the Republican-controlled Senate narrowly confirmed him on party lines. Wehrum was sworn in on Monday by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt.

Why would Wehrum be confirmed in 2017, but not eleven years ago? It’s tempting to blame it on rising Republican extremism, but a closer look at Wehrum’s case reveals a different cause. Senate Republicans wanted to confirm him eleven years ago; even Lincoln Chafee, the moderate Republican who eventually ran for president as a Democrat, supported his nomination. They didn’t succeed simply because Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, a notorious environmental champion, put a hold on Wehrum’s nomination—and a few months later, in the 2006 midterm elections, the Democrats took control of the Senate.

Anecdotally, the Republican Party under President Donald Trump does seem to have less regard for science and the environment than ever before. “The severity of the attacks on science are much greater now than they used to be,” said Michael Halpern, who joined the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) in 2004 to advocate for scientific integrity in the Bush administration. Climate deniers occupy, or have been tapped for, top positions across the federal government, including NASA and the Department of Energy; Trump even nominated a non-scientist talk show host to be the chief scientist of the USDA. “Bush at least tried to pretend his decisions were based on the best available science,” Halpern said. “Trump doesn’t even bother.”

Over the last ten months, the Trump administration has broken international promises to fight global warming, suppressed and distorted science to advance a deregulatory agenda, and replaced environmental advisers with fossil-fuel industry representatives. These moves may seem entirely unprecedented, but in reality, Bush drafted the blueprint for Trump’s house of denialism. Democrats nostalgic for a pre-Trump Republican Party should thus take note—because the similarities between the forty-third and forty-fifth presidents suggest that the GOP after Trump will be just as hostile to science and the environment, if not more so.