Donald Trump on Tuesday once again nominated atmospheric scientist Neil Jacobs to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Jacobs served as interim NOAA administrator in the last two years of Trump’s first term, but the Senate never confirmed him. Whatever his credentials, and he is reportedly viewed with respect by colleagues, Jacobs showed in the Sharpiegate affair that he will bend to Trump’s desires even when that means ignoring data from his own agency.
Established in 1970 by executive order, NOAA forecasts the weather, charts the oceans, scrutinizes oceanic and atmospheric conditions, and manages fishing and protection of marine mammals and endangered species in the U.S. exclusive economic zone.
The expected news about Jacobs came late on the same day NOAA employees reported that Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency gang of wreckers barely old enough to shave had barged into the agency’s Maryland headquarters arrogantly bent on doing the same kind of meddling they’ve been inflicting on federal agencies and departments since Trump began his second occupation of the White House two weeks ago.
Michael Sainato at The Guardian reports:
“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.”
“Get out of my way” may not be the opening line of the DOGE crew whatever agency or department they’ve stomped into, but it’s definitely the attitude. Any bosses of federal operations who try to block this illegal meddling is removed. You can hardly expect DOGE to back off when the Outlaw Prez himself is defying laws far exceeding his usual rate.
Surely the assault was no surprise to anyone at NOAA. On page 664 of the Project 2025 manifesto Trump claimed he had nothing to do, in a section on the Department of Commerce that oversees the agency, the author Thomas F. Gilman writes:
The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories. […]
Together, these [six NOAA offices] form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity. This industry’s mission emphasis on prediction and management seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable. That is not to say NOAA is useless, but its current organization corrupts its useful functions. It should be broken up and downsized.
If the justification for this demolition seems at first unclear, it’s brought into sharp focus by the use of “climate change alarm industry.” That’s a recurring mantra from science deniers, paid and unpaid, whose decades of lying have helped deliver us to our climate predicament. As for NOAA’s mission being “harmful to future U.S. prosperity,” Gilman and the other corporate backers of dismantling the agency don’t have much to say about the harm to prosperity (and a whole lot else) if NOAA’s research is tossed. But what can you expect from people who are busily erasing “climate” and “climate change” from every new federal document, website, and contract. As if erasing the words will erase the reality.
It’s not only climate science denial. Corporations don’t want the government to make NOAA weather data public for free because that means a reduction in the number of products they can sell. Critics of privatization worry that cities, counties, and other entities depending on weather data might not have the resources to pay for what they now can freely access.
Rosenburg noted, “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. 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.’”
That, indeed, has been the game plan behind the blitzkrieg that Musk, Trump, and their minions adopted from the get-go. Smash or cripple agencies, grab data and keep going regardless of what the law or judges say. They are not going to stop. Yesterday it was NOAA, tomorrow it could be [insert agency/department name here]. After all, there are just 16 references to NOAA in the Project 2025 blueprint, but 1,908 for the Environmental Protection Agency.
It was heartening to see an array of Democrats finally getting over being stunned by the speed of this insider attack and speaking up forcefully Tuesday. They’re scrambling to come up with obstacles to defeat this hostile, unconstitutional takeover. Lawsuits are being filed and being planned. But as Rosenburg warned, Trump and Musk and their minions plan to destroy all they can before they are stopped. So far, even court rulings by conservative judges haven’t achieved that. Maybe, as they work on other means, Senators and Representatives should chain themselves to the doors of agencies DOGE hasn’t yet gotten to and get themselves arrested. Of course, it’s scofflaw Musk and the Outlaw Prez who ought to be led away in handcuffs. That seems doubtful no matter how many laws they break.
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