Unelected billionaire Elon Musk, head of DOGE, is in the process of gutting federal agencies without congressional consent.Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Staffers with Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (DOGE) reportedly entered the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Silver Spring, Maryland, and the Department of Commerce in Washington, DC, today, inciting concerns of downsizing at the agency.
“They apparently just sort of walked past security and said: ‘Get out of my way,’ and they’re looking for access for the IT systems, as they have in other agencies,” said Andrew Rosenberg, a former NOAA official who is now a fellow at the University of New Hampshire. “They will have access to the entire computer system, a lot of which is confidential information.”
Cutting NOAA “will have a ripple effect that sacrifices the communities, jobs, and coastal economies that rely on healthy oceans.”
Project 2025, written by numerous former Trump staffers, has called for the agency to be “broken up and downsized,” claiming the agency is “harmful to US prosperity” for its role in climate science.
Rosenberg noted it had been a longtime goal of corporations that rely on NOAA data to prevent the agency from making the data public, instead of giving it directly to private corporations that create products based on it, such as weather forecasting services.
He also argued there was no legal authority to abolish NOAA or reduce its budget, outside of reducing it through Congress. “There’s no real transparency. They just show up wherever they want, do whatever they want. They’re following through on major budget cuts and major staffing cuts,” Rosenberg added. “I think the strategy here is: ‘Well, we’re just going to do it and dare somebody to stop us, and by the time they stop us, we’ll have destroyed it.’”
In response to the prospect of potential cuts of personnel, budget, or mission at NOAA, Beth Lowell, US vice-president of the ocean conservation nonprofit Oceana, said doing so “will have a ripple effect that sacrifices the communities, jobs, and coastal economies that rely on healthy oceans. And the National Weather Service, part of NOAA, provides daily weather forecasts and lifesaving storm alerts that protect our communities across the country and mariners at sea.”
The organization cited impacts of cuts could include overfishing, increased imports of illegal or unethically sourced seafood, threats to endangered wildlife, and threats to life and property without its weather forecasting and data resources.
“Millions of Americans depend on thriving oceans and productive fisheries for their jobs, businesses, and seafood dinners, and our oceans depend on NOAA,” she said in a statement. “President Trump, his administration, and Congress must safeguard our waters for all who depend on well-managed oceans, and that requires full support of NOAA.”
NOAA deferred comment to the Department of Commerce, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
