Supreme Court Ruling Leads to Second Wave of NOAA Firings

Hundreds of climate workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have now been fired for the second time after the Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision on an initial dismissal. This move brings the total toll of fired federal employees up to about 16,000 — jeopardizing vital work at NOAA, including marine pollution research, weather forecasting for hurricanes and tornadoes and decisions for local fisheries that help guard against overfishing. Gathering in Washington D.C. on April 2, Democrats from the House Natural Resources Committee and a range of experts convened to express outrage, and fear at the attacks on the agency.

“The problem is we fired the people that know how to operate the technology,” Val Hoyle, Democrat Member of Congress from Oregon’s 4th District, told reporters at the forum. “They fired the people that know how to operate our tsunami warning system.”

Cuts to an Underfunded Agency Threatens Public Safety

The agency is no stranger to budget challenges. In 2021, a chief scientist for NOAA described the institution as a “$12 billion agency trapped in a $5.5 billion budget,” highlighting the longstanding discrepancy between the agency’s value and its funding.

More cuts to funding and staff will only make this disconnect worse, according to the Representative from Rhode Island’s 2nd District. “The assertion that mass layoffs will somehow improve efficiency is not only misleading, it is outright dangerous,” said Rep. Seth Magaziner at the livestreamed public forum held on Capitol Hill.

“Real people’s jobs and lives are on the line. Without NOAA’s real time data, emergency responders are left without the critical information they need to respond to impending disasters like wildfires, hurricanes, floods and severe storms, putting millions at risk,” added Magaziner, who is a Democrat and member of the House Natural Resources Committee.

The current round of cuts to NOAA comes a couple of months ahead of peak hurricane season. Just last year, hurricanes Helene and Milton ripped through Florida and North Carolina, and local officials were able to rely on forecasting and storm tracking by NOAA during the season.

Natural disaster experts and government officials have raised concerns about what their natural disaster response will look like without extreme weather event predictions. “We have a buoy off the coast of Central Oregon that is part of our tsunami warning system. It’s offline. We can’t get any information,” said Representative Hoyle.

The National Weather Service has also halted weather balloon launches at many of its offices due to lack of staff. The balloons are key to measure temperature and wind and also signal early warnings of tornadoes.

Guardrails on Overfishing Gutted Thanks to DOGE Cuts

Another key role of the agency is to help manage commercial fisheries. The agency’s role in day-to-day operations enables fisheries to function, but also plays a role in protecting fish populations against overfishing, a practice responsible for an estimated 5.6 million metric tons of carbon emissions released into the atmosphere each year.

Though forum speakers described the industry as having a “love-hate relationship” with NOAA, both industry and policy representatives at the forum said that mass layoffs and regulatory freezes would have a crippling effect.

As a result of the layoffs, the Mid-Atlantic bluefin tuna fishery was not closed on schedule for instance, and was subsequently overfished by 125 percent, said Elizabeth Lewis, senior associate attorney at the public interest law firm, Eubanks & Associates, at the forum.

In February, President Trump retaliated against Maine’s Governor Janet Mills for her opposition to his executive order to ban transgender athletes competing in women’s sports. As a result, he temporarily froze the state’s sea grant funding.

“Although funding was reinstated later, it left fishing communities across the country thinking about what would happen if the state sea grant offices that they depend on also became political footballs,” said Sarah Schumann, a fisherman and advocate for local fisheries in Rhode Island. Schumann pointed out the fishing industry heavily relies on NOAA’s data collection and forecasting to navigate U.S. waters amid a warming climate.

Salmon in Washington State are also under threat as cuts to NOAA employees continue, according to reporting from the New York Times. An employee who ensured salmon hatcheries followed the Endangered Species Act was fired — jeopardizing current and future fish populations.

Privatization of Weather Predictions Risks Accuracy

“There is no weather forecast that’s produced in this country that isn’t dependent on NOAA, none,” said Mary Glackin at the forum. Glackin is a former deputy undersecretary at the agency and former employee at the National Weather Service. NOAA is currently operating billions of dollars worth of satellites and high performance weather infrastructure. Glackin worries that this technology and surveillance may be auctioned off to the highest bidder, which would create a monopoly among billionaires to utilize the service for private interests.

This isn’t the first time these programs have been threatened with privatization, as many prior administrations looked to do the same. Yet, they all came to the same conclusion, said Democratic Rep. Melanie Stansbury from New Mexico. The data was so crucial to the public interest that they could not turn it over to the private sector.

If private sector ownership fails, Stansbury said, there would be catastrophic impacts. “It’s very clear that at the end of the day when [Musk] leaves in a few weeks or a couple of months, all he’s going to leave in his wake is a gigantic mess of court cases,” Stanbury said, before pointing to “the loss of scientists and dismantled government programs that will take years to restore [and] that has undermined our standing internationally and undermined our ability to even predict the weather.”

NOAA Plays Key Role in National Security

Decimating NOAA’s workforce is the latest move in weakening national security preparedness, said Rear Admiral John White, the former president of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership and former superintendent of the Naval Observatory. Just last month, Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg was mistakenly added by elected officials to a group chat detailing foreign war plans.

White stressed the importance of NOAA data to military operations and bases at sea, highlighting that our knowledge of oceanography was key to victory in the Cold War.

“It worries me a lot because I know that there are men and women in uniform out there who rely on this information…to maintain our national security and home and away game advantage for years to come. I just don’t know how that’s going to turn out based on the current trend and I lose sleep every night,” White said.

The Future of NOAA?

Democrats on the Natural Resources Committee have sent letters to NOAA officials to ask for more information, a briefing and proposed amendments to legislation so “that [their] committee’s oversight plan would include an understanding of the impact of the gutting of NOAA.”

So far, Republicans in Congress and Trump administration officials have refused all of their requests. The effects of agency cuts may be felt for years to come. “We are at a serious risk of alienating the next generation of scientists, policymakers and leaders who would help the United States weather future storms,” said public interest attorney Lewis.