People working on behalf of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) entered National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) headquarters on Tuesday, according to several sources. Though little is currently known about what Musk’s goons did while at HQ, old comments about diminishing the NOAA’s ability to track climate change have staff worried that layoffs and other forms of downsizing could loom on the horizon.
The NOAA is responsible for daily and extreme weather forecasting, disaster alerts, scientific research, and supporting marine commerce and fisheries management. Multiple people who wished to stay anonymous told Axios that “DOGE representatives” were at the NOAA campus in Silver Spring, Maryland. As they’ve reportedly done at other government agencies, the college-aged cronies stormed in and began looking for the NOAA’s IT systems.
“They apparently just sort of walked past security and said: ‘Get out of my way,'” former NOAA official Andrew Rosenberg told The Guardian. “They will have access to the entire computer system, a lot of which is confidential information.” To Newsweek, Rosenberg added that people at the NOAA “have worked for decades to ensure Americans’ privacy. That’s gone in a week.”
A statue on the NOAA’s Silver Spring campus.
Credit: NOAA
The sudden invasion sparked anxiety among NOAA staff over potential downsizing. Project 2025, a far-right document written by former Trump staffers that outlines plans for the expansion of presidential power, calls for the NOAA to be “broken up and downsized” due to a purported threat “to US prosperity.” (That perceived threat is openly based on the NOAA’s ability to contribute vital ocean and atmosphere data to climate science.) Given the Trump administration’s quick movement in alignment with Project 2025, workers at the NOAA are concerned that budget cuts, layoffs, and even privatization could be around the corner.
Though Rosenberg told The Guardian that no legal authority exists that can abolish the NOAA in its entirety outside of Congressional budget cuts, this might not stop DOGE in the short term.
“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,'” he said. “There’s no real transparency. They just show up wherever they want, do whatever they want.”