Approximately 880 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) employees, including weather forecasters, were terminated Thursday in the latest wave of federal workforce reductions by the Trump administration, according to CBS News.
The layoffs come as Elon Musk, heading the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), continues efforts to cut government spending through funding reductions and staff dismissals.
A NOAA spokesperson declined to comment on internal personnel matters but assured that the agency would continue to “provide weather information, forecasts and warnings pursuant to our public safety mission.” Prior to these cuts, NOAA employed about 12,000 staff worldwide, including 6,773 scientists and engineers.
Democratic Congressman Jared Huffman criticized the move, stating that Americans “depend on NOAA for free, accurate forecasts, severe weather alerts, and emergency information.” He added that “Musk’s sham mission is bringing vital programs to a screeching halt” and warned that “purging the government of scientists, experts, and career civil servants and slashing fundamental programs will cost lives.”
Miyoko Sakashita from the Center for Biological Diversity’s oceans program expressed concern that gutting NOAA will “hamstring essential lifesaving” programs.
These layoffs follow recent confusion among federal employees regarding a Musk-backed directive requiring government workers to list their previous week’s accomplishments in an email or face termination. The Saturday evening message came after Musk claimed on X that in some cases “non-existent people or the identities of dead people are being used to collect paychecks.”
The email requested employees to outline their recent accomplishments in five bullet points without revealing classified information. However, several major agencies including the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Justice, the Pentagon, and the FBI instructed their employees to disregard the directive, while others such as the Department of Transportation and Secret Service advised compliance.
At Trump’s first cabinet meeting Wednesday, Musk described the email as a “pulse check review,” stating, “Do you have a pulse? And two neurons. So if you have a pulse and two neurons, you can reply to an email.”
Meanwhile, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled Thursday that the mass firings of probationary employees were likely unlawful. Judge William Alsup ordered the Office of Personnel Management to inform certain federal agencies, including the defense department, that it lacked authority to order such terminations.
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