Trump To People Threatened By Dangerous Weather: Drop Dead

Friday's firing of hundreds of staffers at NOAA,
including the National Weather Service, put
American lives in danger, but the Trump
administration is unconcerned about that. 

As expected and dreaded, the Trump administration, led by the Elon Musk putting public safety during extreme weather events in jeopardy. 

The firings include positions at the already-understaffed National Weather Service, which is the nation's front line warning system for when storms turn dangerous. 

Exact numbers are hard to come by, but it looks like about 10 percent of NOAA's work force would lose their jobs. 

The first test of how these cutbacks will affect public safety could come as early as Tuesday and Wednesday, as a potentially significant tornado outbreak seems possible across the Deep South. 

Such outbreaks of severe weather require a high level of attention from meteorologists because such conditions evolve quickly. A harmless thunderstorm can become tornadic in minutes, and the National Weather Service needs to be ready to issue warnings. 

A lack of staff could mean key hints that a tornado is forming could be missed.

Per the Washington Post:

"Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles, said the move to fire NOAA staff 'including mission-critical and life-saving roles at the National Weather Service is profoundly alarming'

'I want to be clear: If there were to be large staffing reductions at NOAA and NWS...there will be people who die in extreme weather events and weather-related disasters who would not have otherwise.'"

The firings include about 375 probationary employees at the National Weather Service. The pre-existing short staffing there is due in large part to a previous hiring freeze imposed by the Trump administration. 

Also on Friday, news broke that a federal judge ruled the mass firings of probationary government works across several agencies are probably illegal. The judge ordered the Office of Personnel Management to rescind directions ordering the mass firings.

It's unknown how this ruling will ultimately affect the firings at NOAA and other agencies. 

Already the cutbacks are being felt. The National Weather Service routinely launches balloons into the air so minute details of atmospheric conditions can be assessed. This data is fed into forecasting computer models. 

Balloon launches are already being canceled due to new staff shortages, so the quality of these forecasting models might well diminish.  That's especially bad when emergency managers are trying to get an idea in advance of where a severe storm might go and how bad it will get.  This helps them pre-position supplies in the path of the storm to get an early jump on recovery. 

Worse climate models will mean worse, more inaccurate forecasts. 

Besides, a lot of FEMA workers have been canned by Trump and Musk, too. The combination FEMA and National Weather Service firings will certainly mean emergency responses to U.S. weather disasters will become much worse. Again, unnecessarily threatening lives. 

Your local TV meteorologist will be affected by the cutbacks as well. They rely on data from the NOAA and the National Weather Service to formulated their forecasts. If the data degrades because the NWS firings, so will the TV meteorologists' forecasting accuracy, no matter how talented that meteorologist is. 

Well known, professional meteorologists around the nation condemned the firings. "Mass firings have started at the National Weather Service, including people in critical roles. Cutting waste is great. Mindlessly taking a sledgehammer to a valuable organization is stupid. All the know-it-alls who said we were fabricating this threat can shut up now, thanks," said Josh Morgerman on X.  Morgerman is a well -known hurricane and typhoon chaser and documentarian. 

When the decision to fire NOAA staffers seemed imminent but hadn't quite happened yet, veteran meteorologist (and one of the nation's top tornado experts) had this to say on X:

"The post is not about politics, but about support for my friends that work for the National Weather Service, part of NOAA, a federal agency.

NWS meteorologists work long, hard hours serving the people of this country, not only during times of severe weather, but on routine days as well,

Their surface and upper air observation networks along with computer models radars and satellites are critical for all meteorologists, including those of us in the private sector."

There is already some political pushback to the NOAA firings. We'll see what happens with those. Colorado Sens. John Hickenlooper (D) and Michael Bennet (D) and Rep. Joe Negus (D) have called for an independent investigation into the mass firings, according to The Hill. 

I know this seems awfully conspiratorial, but I think a goal of the Trump administration is to have people live in fear. They're easier to control that way. So they fear having Medicaid, and Social Security taken away. 

The NOAA firings are another form of fear: Will we still receive adequate warnings when severe weather threatens?

This is all also likely to be a part of Project 2025, the wide ranging 922-page plan developed by the conservative Heritage Foundation to remake the federal government under Trump. 

Trump seems to be playing by the Project 2025 playbook. That plan called for privatizing weather forecasting in the U.S.  That, would, of course, make weather forecasting less reliable, and perhaps put critical weather warnings behind paywalls that some people might not be able to afford. 

I still worry we're heading in that direction, which would be even worse that the stupid, ill-advised NOAA firings we saw on Friday. 

This also all could further enrich Trump. Musk and other U.S. oligarchs. Hey, if the billionaires are able to collect a few extra billion beyond what they already have, it's worth the price of lost lives. At least in their rotten minds.