According to a frantic-sounding Associated Press story, NOAA was informed this week it’s getting a 10% reduction from its current workforce of 10,290 employees. The agency's budget in 2024 was $6.8 billion.
That reduction of force came after the federal agency experienced other job-cutting measures, such as President Trump’s termination of all newly hired federal employees. Some NOAA workers also accepted a buyout offered to all federal workers in late January.
The public probably knows about one responsibility of NOAA, the National Weather Service and its forecasts and storm alerts. The federal agency is responsible for everything from monitoring hurricanes and tornadoes to managing ocean fisheries and space weather, the AP points.
Altogether, according to the AP story, NOAA is witnessing 1 out of 4 employees getting shown the door at a vital federal agency with a wide range of responsibilities.
“This is not government efficiency,” Rick Spinrad, a former NOAA administrator, told the AP. “It is the first steps toward eradication.”
However, if NOAA is losing 25% of its workforce as claimed, 3 out of 4 NOAA employees, 8,000 in all, will be at work next week.
A related NOAA story, by USA Today, estimates the job cuts will total 20% at NOAA after the 10% cut announced this week.
Marc Moreno, of Climate Depot, tells AFN the public is being told the country can’t function without a fully-employed federal agency.
“This has happened every time someone even hints at cutting budgets or staff of the federal government,” he says.
Going back to House Speaker Newt Gingrich, now 30 years ago, Republicans in Congress have promised voters again and again they will slash the size of a bloated, bureaucratic government.
The difference now is the Trump administration is actually doing it – without the involvement of Republicans in Congress – and doing it quickly.
Moreno, whose daily job is battling climate change alarmists, says the hysteria from NOAA and the media is the entire country is going to fall apart unless the federal agency is left untouched.
“It’s just utter nonsense,” he insists.
In a previous Associated Press story about NOAA’s first jobs cuts, Spinrad accused DOGE leader Elon Musk of forgetting about NOAA’s past help.
Musk ran to NOAA for help in 2022 when SpaceX satellites were hit and damaged by a solar storm, Spinrad said, which happened because of SpaceX’s “ignorance” about space weather and the density of the upper atmosphere.
It is possible, however, that space-savvy Musk is also aware of NOAA’s plans for its own taxpayer-funded satellite, a next-generation stationary satellite called the GeoXO.
A letter to NOAA in 2023, from two Republican senators, demanded answers about launch delays and cost overruns for a vital replacement satellite projected to cost $19.6 billion during its lifetime.
