In Trump’s war on NOAA, the losers will be Americans and the economy

Last month, close to 1,000 National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration workers, including weather forecasters, were fired. The Trump administration has now told agency leaders to fire another 1,000 people. Along with 300 resignations to date this will approach 20% of its workforce.

The White House’s Department of Government Efficiency also informed NOAA that its lease on the Center for Weather and Climate Prediction in College Park, Md., will soon be canceled. The center is essential in creating accurate computer models for everything from the next severe weather front to hit farmers in the Midwest to the long-term costs of extreme weather events linked to climate change.

NOAA was also ordered to cut off $4.5 million in funding to Maine Sea Grant, one of 34 state-based university sea grant programs that support research on marine and Great Lakes issues to help local economies. The University of Maine was told its efforts (unlike the other 33 programs, so far) were “no longer relevant to the focus of the Administration’s priorities.” Among the first to object was the Maine Lobstermen’s Assn., saying the loss would “have a negative effect on both our economy and our environment.”

Just days before, at a gathering at the White House, President Trump publicly told the governor of Maine that if the state did not enforce an executive order aimed at trans college athletes, “you’re not going to get federal funding.” Then came the sea grant cancellation, and Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) said: “It’s pretty clear the president has a personal vendetta against our state.”

Perhaps, but it’s also clear that the entire right-wing network of policymakers, think tanks and MAGA influencers setting the second Trump administration’s agenda have a vendetta against NOAA. The agency’s climate science and assessments, considered preeminent sources for U.S. and global planning, are anathema to the oil industry and the right-wing think tanks it helps fund.

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 — the script written for Trump that he insisted he knew nothing about during the 2024 campaign, but which he seems to be implementing now — calls for NOAA to be “broken up and downsized” so that it stops contributing to “the climate change alarm industry.”

Project 2025 also revives an idea from the first Trump administration to privatize the National Weather Service — which would be a gift for a few private forecasting companies, but would deprive millions of Americans of information when their lives are threatened by tornadoes or floods.

When I first began reporting on the organization more than 25 years ago, there was an internal joke that NOAA stood for “No Organization at All,” but many of the bureaucratic problems from the last century have long since been resolved. One example: The federal Magnuson-Stevens fisheries act that NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service oversees (and enforces along with the U.S. Coast Guard), has made the U.S. commercial fishing fleet the most sustainable in the world. At the same time, NOAA Fisheries has been working to support the growth of U.S. aquaculture, as more than half the world’s seafood including fish and edible seaweeds now comes from ocean farming, mostly in China and other parts of Asia. The American right’s vendetta against NOAA is a handout to China and a blow to U.S. food security.

Over the years I’ve witnessed the organization’s maturing with more integration of purpose between its fisheries and marine sanctuary functions, its science and operational side (its ship-based NOAA Corps is one of the eight uniformed government services), even its wet side and weather side with its vessels, radars, satellites and hurricane hunter aircraft. These technologies not only support American businesses and national security but also can be credited with saving thousands of lives a year by predicting disasters such as hurricanes and floods.

Trump’s grudge against NOAA is not new. It got an unfortunate spotlight in 2019: Remember “Sharpiegate”? Trump had been wrong about the trajectory of Hurricane Dorian, and then someone used a marker to alter an official map so it would appear to back up the president’s claim that the storm had been headed for Alabama.

Craig McLean, a former NOAA Corps uniformed service member and NOAA’s chief scientist at the time, stood up for scientific ethics, officially reprimanding Neil Jacobs, NOAA’s acting director, who sided with Trump against the Birmingham, Ala., weather service office (and against the facts). Under Trump’s second reign, Jacobs has been reinstated as head of NOAA.

McLean, meanwhile, has gotten eloquent in his retirement, telling fellow scientists at America’s leading ocean agency: “You are ocean and meteorology people. You know storms. We’ll get through this and let’s hope the ship looks the same when we do.” (McLean is an advisory board member at Blue Frontier, the policy group I direct.)

Unfortunately, without a loud and immediate outcry from the public including fishermen, mariners, scientists and anyone who needs an accurate weather forecast, this ship increasingly looks like it’s in the process of being torpedoed.

David Helvarg, a writer, is the executive director of Blue Frontier, an ocean policy group. He co-hosts “Rising Tide: The Ocean Podcast.”