It was supposed to be “the climate skeptic victory tour,” in the words of one prominent attendee. Last week, hundreds of enthusiastic climate change deniers convened in the Grand Hyatt Washington hotel in Washington, D.C., for the Heartland Institute’s twelfth annual conference. Now that one of their own—President Donald Trump—had taken the White House, the conference promised to be a festival of gloating. Marc Morano, the Matt Drudge of climate denialism, told me the political situation has “everyone grinning ear to ear.”

But something was amiss. Though sentiments like Morano’s were common, I also met apprehensive attendees who worry that “swamp creatures” at the Environmental Protection Agency are undermining attempts to hobble the agency. These alleged swamp creatures aren’t just the career staffers who have openly protested Scott Pruitt, the agency’s new administrator. They’re the people whom Pruitt has hired—and even Pruitt himself.

“The relationship has not been a smooth one. And it should be,” said Becky Norton Dunlop, an EPA transition team member and fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “We may need some marriage counseling.”

Dunlop and another transition team member, David Stevenson of the libertarian Caesar Rodney Institute, told me they believe neither Pruitt nor his team has read the extensive policy document the transition team submitted to the agency earlier this year. (Dunlop and Stevenson know members of the EPA beachhead team, a group of temporary political appointees laying the groundwork for Trump’s agenda. A spokesperson for Pruitt did not return my request for comment.)

No one would say exactly what’s in that policy document; every EPA transition team member signed agreements barring them from speaking about their specific recommendations. But in his presentation, transition leader Myron Ebell hinted in his presentation at the conference that the document includes many of the environmental policy promises Trump made on the campaign trail: pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement, defund international climate programs, withdraw regulations on carbon dioxide and methane emissions, and undo the EPA’s categorization of carbon dioxide as a pollutant.