BBC News
Getty ImagesHundreds of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) staff have been laid off in the latest development in the Trump’s administration’s efforts to slash the federal workforce.
Around 880 workers – including weather forecasters – have had their jobs terminated on Thursday, the BBC’s US partner CBS News reported.
The cuts come as Elon Musk, as the head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), continues a push to reduce spending through funding cuts and firings.
An NOAA spokesman said the agency would not comment on internal personnel matters.
Prior to Thursday’s cuts, the NOAA had about 12,000 staffers across the world, including 6,773 who are scientists and engineers, according to the agency’s website.
“We continue to provide weather information, forecasts and warnings pursuant to our public safety mission,” the NOAA spokesman added.
But Californian Democratic Congressman Jared Huffman said people across the US “depend on NOAA for free, accurate forecasts, severe weather alerts, and emergency information”.
NOAA weather data is used by meteorologists, media organisations, commerical forecasting services and other companies to inform the US public about the weather. The agency produces the latest information on temperature, precipitation, air quality, UV index, humidity and more.
It also has proved essential during periods of extreme weather conditions. The National Hurricane Center and the National Weather Service – housed under NOAA – create models and notify millions of Americans when and how to respond to severe weather events, such as hurricanes and tornadoes.
Huffman lamented the loss of “hundreds of scientists and experts at NOAA” who helped collect data that kept the public informed about dangerous weather events.
“Musk’s sham mission is bringing vital programs to a screeching halt. Purging the government of scientists, experts, and career civil servants and slashing fundamental programs will cost lives,” the congressman said.
Miyoko Sakashita, the Center for Biological Diversity’s oceans director, said gutting NOAA will “hamstring essential lifesaving” programmes.
The latest developments come days after US government workers faced widespread confusion following conflicting advice over compliance with a Musk-backed order to list their last week’s work in an email or face termination.
The message sent to millions of federal employees last Saturday evening came after Musk posted on his social media platform X that government staff would “shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week”.
On Sunday, Musk said in some cases “we believe non-existent people or the identities of dead people are being used to collect paychecks”.
In a copy of the email obtained by the BBC, employees were asked to respond explaining their accomplishments from the past week in five bullet points – without disclosing classified information.
But, key agencies, including the Departments of Defense (DoD), Health and Human Services (HHS), Justice, the Pentagon and the FBI – now led by Trump appointees -instructed employees to ignore the directive.
Agencies such as the Department of Transportation, the Secret Service and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency encouraged their staff to comply, according to reports.
On Wednesday, Musk reiterated the suggestion that a number of federal employees who did not respond to an email requesting a summary of their achievements from the previous week could be “dead” or “not real people”, but offered no facts to back it up.
Speaking at Trump’s first cabinet meeting, Musk told reporters: “I think that email perhaps was best interpreted as a performance review, but actually it was a pulse check review.
“Do you have a pulse? Do you have a pulse? And two neurons. So if you have a pulse and two neurons, you can reply to an email.”
Elsewhere on Thursday, a federal judge in San Francisco found that the mass firings of probationary employees were likely unlawful.
District Judge William Alsup ordered the Office of Personnel Management to inform certain federal agencies that it had no authority to order the firings of probationary employees, including at the defence department.
