Doge staffers enter Noaa headquarters and incite reports of cuts and threats Members reportedly sought access to IT systems at agency that Project 2025 has called ‘harmful to US prosperity’.
In response to the prospect of potential cuts of personnel, budget or mission at Noaa, Beth Lowell, US vice-president of the ocean conservation non-profit Oceana, said doing so “will have a ripple effect that sacrifices the communities, jobs, and coastal economies that rely on healthy oceans.
Rosenberg noted it’s been a longtime goal of corporations that rely on Noaa data to prevent the agency from making the data public, instead of giving it directly to private corporations that create products based on it, such as weather forecasting services.
Staffers with Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) reportedly entered the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) in Silver Spring, Maryland, and the Department of Commerce in Washington DC today, inciting concerns of downsizing at the agency.
“They apparently just sort of walked past security and said: ‘Get out of my way,’ and they’re looking for access for the IT systems, as they have in other agencies,” said Andrew Rosenberg, a former Noaa official who is now a fellow at the University of New Hampshire.
