- The Trump administration appears poised to make cuts to the Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). A DOGE employee now has edit access to NOAA documents and the agency has been ordered to halt its international communication. NOAA officials told CBS News that the organization will be forced to lay off more than 6,000 employees and expects 30% budget cuts.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been in the offices of another government agency this week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), according to a joint statement from congressional leaders and CBS News. The agency was established in 1970 and its remit is to research weather, oceans, and the Earth’s atmosphere and operate the National Weather Service. NOAA’s National Hurricane Center monitors tropical weather systems, and relies on its Hurricane Hunter planes to issue forecasts and warnings to U.S. residents before severe storms and hurricanes.
Led by billionaire Elon Musk, DOGE claims that it can eliminate $2 trillion in government spending, and its attempts to do so include cutting budgets of federal agencies across the country. Democrats warned that the DOGE’s beam is now directed at NOAA.
“Now they have reached the NOAA where they’re wreaking havoc on the scientific and regulatory systems that protect American families’ safety and jobs,” House members Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said in a joint statement.
The agency has been told it should expect to lose half of its 13,000 employees and to prepare for 30% budget cuts, former NOAA officials told CBS News. Additionally, former NOAA officials said that DOGE staffers visited NOAA headquarters in Silver Spring, Md., and the Hoover Building in Washington, D.C., which hosts the U.S. Department of Commerce.
“They walked through security like it didn’t apply to them,” former NOAA deputy director Andrew Rosenberg told CBS News. “They were there and they were going through IT systems… This isn’t a review to figure out efficiency.”
The National Marine Fisheries Service, a division of the NOAA, received an order to halt “ALL INTERNATIONAL ENGAGEMENTS,” in an internal email obtained by Wired. In the message, the orders include all participation with international agencies and emails “with foreign national colleagues.”
Earlier this week, DOGE employee Nikhil Rajpal was given edit access to the NOAA’s documents after an alleged order came from acting commerce secretary Jeremy Pelter. Rajpal’s online presence is minimal; he does not have a LinkedIn; but Wired reported that Rajpal previously worked at Tesla and Twitter and has no prior experience in the field of NOAA expertise.
This comes a day after President Trump named Neil Jacobs to lead the NOAA. Jacobs was the acting administrator in 2019 during Trump’s first-term “Sharpie-gate” scandal when he modified Hurricane Dorian’s storm map.
Last Saturday, the DOGE team disrupted funding, operations, and cut staff of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), quarantining any sensitive or classified documents into a secure room in the office. Two days later, the Trump Administration cut its funding.
