When assessing patients’ health, doctors distinguish between “symptoms” and “signs.”

Symptoms are subjective, the feelings a patient has indicating something’s wrong.

Signs are objective, the results of X-rays and scans, and call for immediate action.

Now, five months into President Donald Trump’s reign of terror on our environment, the symptoms of trouble that were flooding Louisiana have been joined by signs requiring urgent action.

First, a respected environmental researcher at Tulane University felt compelled to resign, claiming the school had placed her and her work under gag orders because politicians and the petrochemical industry didn’t like the results.

Next, researchers at Southeastern Louisiana University found alarming levels of toxic metals and pollution in Lake Maurepas.

Finally, for the second year in a row, U.S. News and World Report declared Louisiana the worst state to live in, a finding heavily influenced by our ranking as the second most polluted state.

Each of those signs result from Trump’s unprecedented two-pronged assault on America’s environment.

He has issued 145 orders rolling back or killing regulations currently protecting Americans. Those changes could lead to premature deaths of more than 200,000 over the next 25 years due to increased heart and respiratory illnesses, studies show. It’s Trump’s opinion that protection for humans should not interfere with business profits. But he knows regulations can only become law if they are based on the factual findings from scientific research.

So, like the autocrats and dictators he admires and wants to emulate, King Donald doesn’t want his subjects to know the truth. That’s why he’s trying to make those facts disappear and prevent any future findings.

Thus, he has ordered environmental agencies to remove results of studies from their websites, and proposed dramatic cutbacks in their funding that includes shuttering entire sections.

This includes reducing funding at the National Science Foundation (57%); the National Institutes of Health (40%); NASA’s science budget (47%); the Department of Energy’s Office of Science (14%) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (28%).

A massive 40% reduction for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was no surprise. NOAA has been at the forefront of research explaining the current and future catastrophic impacts of climate change such as sea level rise and larger hurricanes — all of which are caused largely by fossil fuel emissions.

But the cuts at NOAA — designed to protect oil and gas from being blamed for their role in climate change — would also leave Louisiana and other coastal states without some of the lifesaving information on hurricanes the agency provides. Maybe he’ll use his Sharpie to change their paths?

In fact, any program related to climate change — including the billions Congress authorized two years ago — may be rolled back. Trump has already ordered more than 100 climate studies to be shut down.

And he is using the massive power of the federal purse to reach outside federal agencies and into the world of academia because America’s universities conduct much our environmental research using federal grants.

Some of the nation’s elite universities, such as Columbia, have folded to his demands. Others, notably Harvard, are fighting for academic freedom.

Tulane has chosen to wave the white flag. It’s worried funding from petrochemical giants could be jeopardized. It apparently believes in that old saying, “The problem with tainted money is “‘Tain’t enough of it!’”

But the real problem is that Trump’s war on science and universities is really a war on the freedom of truth, the kryptonite feared by all autocrats.

And the truth for Louisiana is that Trump’s war on science is setting our state up for a permanent place at the bottom of the list of best places to live in the United States.

He is doing all of this with the support of Louisiana’s GOP congressional delegation.

The signs have already moved Louisiana into the intensive care unit. Unless he is stopped, we’ll eventually be in hospice care.