Project 2025 infuriated some weather and political watchers as Florida prepared for Hurricane Helene.
“Reminder that Project 2025 would dismantle the National Weather Service and NOAA,” wrote the League of Conservation Voters on X.
Established in 1970, NOAA stands for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“As Florida prepares for a major hurricane to make landfall this week, don’t forget that Donald Trump’s Project 2025 would eliminate the National Weather Service and NOAA,” Brian Tyler Cohen, a liberal YouTube influencer, posted on Instagram.
During a Sept. 19 House Oversight Committee hearing, U.S. Representative Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., made a similar comment on Project 2025.
“Project 2025 wants to get rid of NOAA, wants to get rid of the National Weather Service — the people that tell you the weather and help you prepare for hurricanes,” said Moskowitz, a past Florida emergency management director under Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla.
Moskowitz made a joke about how Project 2025 and the Trump government would affect storm forecasting.
“Maybe we will just do it with a Magic 8 ball or maybe with an Ouija board. Or maybe we will do hurricane cones like President Trump did, right where he just circled in another state that wasn’t in the cones,” Moskowitz said.
In his jab at Trump, Moskowitz cited a Sharpie-marked chart that Trump had displayed in 2019 to support his claim that all hurricane models incorrectly predicted Dorian would strike Alabama. (In addition, Moskowitz did not originate the Magic 8 ball line.)
Setting aside partisanship, what is the message of Project 2025 regarding NOAA and the National Weather Service?
A Moskowitz spokesperson, Keith Nagy, said “While Project 2025 does not call for the complete dismantling of the NOAA, it intends to undermine the agency’s independence from the executive branch and eliminate many of its internal departments. Any threats toward the NOAA or NWS jeopardize life-saving information about hurricanes, heat waves, and other extreme weather events.”
A representative for NOAA declined to comment.
Project 2025 calls for breaking up NOAA, commercializing forecast operations
The conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is their proposed Republican administration’s policy guide. Although it was penned by multiple former Trump administration officials, Trump has denied any involvement. At a Heritage gathering in Florida in 2022, Trump stated during his keynote address that the group would “lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.”
About four pages of Project 2025 are devoted to NOAA and the National Weather Service. Thomas F. Gilman, a member of Trump’s Commerce Department staff, wrote that section.
The memo stated that NOAA “should be broken up and downsized” and characterises it as a key element “of the climate change alarm industry.”
One of the six NOAA agencies, the National Weather Service, offers forecasts and warnings related to the weather and environment. Within NOAA, the National Weather Service houses the National Hurricane Centre.
The National Weather Service would not completely disappear with Project 2025. It states that the organisation “should focus on its data-gathering services,” and it “should fully commercialise its forecasting operations.”
It stated that “commercialisation of weather technologies should be prioritised to ensure that taxpayer dollars are invested in the most cost-efficient technologies for high-quality research and weather data.” According to Project 2025, investing in commercial partners would boost competition.
Project 2025 further recommended that the National Weather Service be transformed into a “performance-based organisation” with accountability for meeting predetermined goals, even if the agency’s director needs to “deviate from government rules” to do so.
