The White House is preparing to cancel the leases for important weather forecasting offices, including the NOAA Center for Weather and Climate Prediction in College Park, Maryland, according to new reports from the Verge and Axios, citing officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And it’s just the latest bad news for Americans who like accurate weather forecasts and not dying from severe storms.
The building lease on the chopping block includes the National Weather Service’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction, which produces forecasts for the Air Force, the Navy, and the FAA, according to the Verge. Those are, of course, the kind of organizations that rely on accurate weather forecasting to perform. Cuts at the FAA have already raised growing concerns about an increase in aviation accidents. And more slash-and-burn tactics by DOGE aren’t going to make anyone safer.
There’s some confusion about whether the NOAA leases have actually been cut yet or whether it’s just in the pipeline. But that kind of confusion is fairly typical of what’s happened over the past month as Elon Musk’s DOGE has taken a chainsaw to the U.S. federal government. Contracts have been cancelled, and thousands of workers have lost their jobs as President Donald Trump has tasked Musk with cutting $2 trillion from the federal budget.
Trump and Musk insist DOGE is just cutting “waste, fraud, and abuse,” but the oligarchs have yet to present any evidence of fraud in what they’ve announced. In reality, Musk appears to be making a unilateral decision over what should be funded, a completely illegal move that circumvents Congress, which has the actual power to spend money on behalf of the government.
About 10% of NOAA employees have already been laid off, according to the Verge, and reports indicate DOGE is trying to eliminate 50% of the agency. That’s obviously a terrible idea if you want to have accurate weather forecasts, but it’s become increasingly clear that Musk doesn’t care what kind of damage he does to Americans and our quality of life.
An anonymous NOAA employee who spoke with Axios described the cuts as a “nightmare scenario” with another worker telling the Verge that “you may not know all the work that goes on behind the scenes, but if these cuts continue, you will feel them personally at some point when that work is gone.”
Another building that could get its lease canceled is the Radar Operations Center in Norman, Oklahoma, which is run by NOAA but partners with the Department of Transportation and the Department of Defense to maintain weather radars. But it’s not like the FAA or Army need radar, right?
Read the full article here
