After illegally axing USAID and drafting plans to do the same with the Department of Education, President Donald Trump and his unelected co-president, Elon Musk, have now set their sights on decimating the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal scientific agency that helps forecast the weather, monitors oceanic and atmospheric conditions, and manages the protection of marine life.
"Hearing reports that Musk’s cronies are targeting NOAA—infiltrating key systems & locking out career employees," Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland wrote on X. "NOAA is vital for weather forecasting, scientific research & more. Their critical work saves lives. My team and I are looking into this & we will not stand for it."
As of Wednesday morning, parts of the NOAA website appear to be down, including the Global Monitoring Lab, which conducts research on greenhouse gasses. Greenhouse gasses lead to global warming and climate change, which Trump and the GOP deny are real, despite the scientific consensus otherwise.
What's more, Trump on Wednesday nominated Neil Jacobs to lead the NOAA, the same guy who was reprimanded in June 2020 for "Sharpiegate"—when Trump used a sharpie to alter the path of Hurricane Dorian on an official map to say it would impact Alabama and Florida when it was not projected to.
In fact, the report finding that Jacobs violated scientific ethics with his involvement with Sharpiegate is now offline, replaced with text saying, “These are not the sites you are looking for” (a reference to the film “Star Wars”). However, the report can still be accessed through the Wayback Machine, an internet archive that helps preserve websites even if they are removed.
The report found that Jacobs—who at the time served as acting director of the NOAA—issued statements about the hurricane that were "driven by external political pressure" and "inappropriately criticized ... underlying scientific activity," which "compromised NOAA's integrity and reputation as an independent scientific agency."
A man walks past an area flooded by the effects of Hurricane Helene near the Swannanoa river on Sept. 27, 2024, in Asheville, North Carolina.
Jacobs would have to be confirmed by the Senate to get the job. But Senate Republicans have confirmed all of Trump’s unqualified and dangerous Cabinet nominees so far, so hoping that Republicans would do the right thing and vote down Jacobs is a fool’s errand.
Ultimately, getting rid of NOAA is a goal of Project 2025, the far-right Heritage Foundation’s roadmap for a second Trump term. On last year’s campaign trail, Trump claimed he had nothing to do with that agenda, but it is now clearly driving the actions of him and his administration.
Project 2025 also calls for privatizing the National Weather Service, which helps forecast major events like hurricanes, wildfires, blizzards, and flooding. That would make it harder for Americans to get accurate (and free) information about impending storms.
Experts say that privatizing the NWS would make hurricane preparation and clean up even harder.
“Attacking this agency, attacking the science that it's doing is really damaging to the public,” Rachel Cleetus, policy director for the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists, told PBS News in September. “They would like the private sector to run rampant and not be fettered by any kind of guardrails. And we all know that the climate crisis is accelerating, getting worse, having an impact on our economy as well as the environment.”
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