Hey Congress, Please Stand Up To the Trump Administration’s Attacks on NOAA
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Last week, hundreds of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA ) employees were fired for a second time (!) by the Trump administration. Since then, news reports have indicated that NOAA will face further drastic cuts in staffing and budgets soon, including potentially getting rid of the entire Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) division. Our nation’s foremost federal scientific agency for weather forecasting and climate research is under a full-scale assault—and that should alarm us all.
The cuts identified in news stories have not yet been publicly confirmed by NOAA or the Trump administration. In any other administration, one might be inclined to wait and see, hoping that rational choices safeguarding the public interest will prevail. But again and again, this administration has shown that it’s willing to engage in unbounded destruction and cares little about what it’s destroying or if their unilateral actions are even legal. Cut first and ask questions later, no matter the harm to people, seems to be the modus operandi.
And what they’re destroying is an incredibly rich and valuable scientific enterprise, built up over decades through investments made by US taxpayers, for the public’s benefit. NOAA belongs to all of us—communities, first responders, farmers, mariners, businesses, local decisionmakers—and we need to fight for what is ours. Congress needs to step up to do its job: reclaim its constitutional power and limit the worst excesses of this increasingly authoritarian administration.
Numerous news outlets have reported on a leaked document showing the president’s proposed budget for NOAA, which outlines significant cuts to the agency. As my colleague Marc Alessi points out, if those cuts go forward, they would significantly degrade the agency’s ability to provide lifesaving and economically beneficial data and forecasts.
Back in February, following from an executive order issued by President Trump, Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, (OPM) issued guidance requiring agencies to author and deliver reorganization plans by April 14. Specifically, it says:
Agencies should… submit a Phase 2 ARRP [Agency Reduction in Force and Reorganization Plans] to OMB and OPM for review and approval no later than April 14, 2025. Phase 2 plans shall outline a positive vision for more productive, efficient agency operations going forward. Phase 2 plans should be planned for implementation by September 30, 2025.
US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who heads the department that oversees NOAA, has presumably complied with this guidance but those decisions have not yet been made public.
It seems that the administration is determined to degrade NOAA’s capabilities, one way or another. Of course, decisions about the actual budget appropriated for agencies are made by Congress—and it should not just obediently rubberstamp these dangerous cuts.
OAR, headquartered in Silver Spring, MD, provides the foundational research and data underpinning the work of other parts of the agency. In collaboration with various divisions at NOAA, OAR helps develop and advance scientific understanding of Earth systems to ensure more accurate weather forecasts, better early warnings for extreme weather events, and greater understanding of climate change within the US and across the globe.
From improved hurricane forecasting to better tornado modeling and warning systems, OAR science and scientists play a critical role in keeping people in every part of the country safe.
Yet, the leaked proposed Trump budget document calls for the elimination of OAR as a line office, and many of its career staff have already been laid off. While parts of its work and staff may be shifted to other divisions of NOAA, there’s no question that huge cuts like this would be devastating to its essential work, not to mention our country’s standing in the global scientific community.
Just last week, NOAA celebrated 50 years of its Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) program. GOES satellites are the agency’s “eyes in the sky,” helping to monitor and track severe weather, environmental hazards and space weather. GOES-19, the latest model in the series, just became operational as GOES-East and is slated to provide critical new information to weather forecasters across the nation.
Just in the last month, this incredible satellite system has helped monitor two powerful storm system and tornado outbreaks—one that affected central and eastern US, and another that stretched from Texas to the Great Lakes—and provided early warnings to communities in their path that undoubtedly helped save lives. NOAA has plans to expand these capabilities through the Geostationary Extended Observations (GeoXO) satellite system, scheduled to begin operation in the early 2030s, which would provide enhanced information on emerging threats including climate change.
Yet, the leaked document indicates a plan to make major cuts in NOAA’s satellite program, including cancelling contracts associated with the GeoXO program and contracts for NASA collaboration on it. Unfortunately, it’s not too far-fetched to imagine that changes like this could be aimed at trying to deliberately gut agency capabilities so as to privatize critical satellite systems and hand large contracts to companies that will then take advantage of taxpayers financially in the years to come.
The Trump administration’s assault on NOAA—including the reckless mass firings of career scientists and other experts, targeting of climate-related work for elimination, and threats to precious, long-standing resources and data—are all reprehensible. They will harm people across the country and could leave the nation at a scientific disadvantage for decades to come.
Much of what is happening was previewed in Project 2025, whose chief architect, Russell Vought, is now executing his master plan from his powerful perch at the OMB. Project 2025 chillingly said:
The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.
It took specific aim at OAR, calling for it to be downsized and for its climate-related research to be disbanded, falsely disparaging it as “the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism.”
And here we are, not even three months into the term of this administration, watching the destruction unfold as planned.
Refusing to accept the scientific reality of climate change and gutting the nation’s ability to understand those changes won’t make climate impacts go away. Instead, cities, states and our country will be left flying blind into this oncoming disaster, without the information they urgently need to get out ahead in responding to worsening risks.
This is not efficiency; this is not going to save money. This is, quite literally, going to cost lives and lead to mounting, incredibly expensive damage to our economy. Congress, please stand up to these attacks and defend NOAA.
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