Trump fires more workers at NOAA

more lay-offs still to come

The Trump administration on Friday had some workers of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The Trump administration has its government-shrinking sights set on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where around 800 employees have been put up for termination.

This is according to sources close to the agency.

One of the sources said there could be more layoffs on Friday, potentially costing the weather, climate and environmental agency more than a thousand employees by the end of the week.

Most divisions of the agency, which employ scientists and specialists in weather, oceans, biodiversity, climate and other research and planetary monitoring fields, were affected.

A source inside the National Weather Service told CNN that Probationary employees who number between 350 and 375 employees — those who have been in their jobs for a year or less, in most cases — were fired on Thursday.

Though it’s not clear how many of those were impacted.

The source said there were some exemptions given to critical positions — likely life-threatening disaster forecasting roles, including hurricanes and severe thunderstorms.

National Weather Service employees are protected by a workers’ union, which was trying Thursday night to contact affected employees.

Some employees who were fired said on social media that they were going to take legal options.

The people who were charged with conducting the terminations seemed to have acted in a way that would minimize paper trails, a source close to NOAA said.

Reason, according to the source being to make it difficult for others at the agency to know who was affected, and leaving news of the firings to spread verbally.

The terminated NOAA workers’ letters had stated that the reason for firing the workers was because the sacked workers did not fit into the Agency’s current needs.

Many probationary workers at some federal agencies who were laid off earlier this month received letters that also said they were being let go because their performance had not been adequate to justify further employment, regardless of whether they had good reviews.

The terminations are a blow to an agency that has been understaffed for years, even as the climate crisis accelerates and extreme weather becomes more frequent.

Critics of the administration’s plan to slash the agency have said the NOAA layoffs would further cripple America’s ability to accurately forecast hurricanes, tornadoes and other costly, deadly extreme weather.

According to CNN, Meteorologists and computer engineers across NOAA were impacted, including at the Hurricane Research Division, where employees work to increase the accuracy of hurricane forecasts.

Andrew Hazelton, a researcher with a PhD in meteorology, was one of the employees terminated Thursday.

He said on social media that his role was to evaluate hurricane forecasts and improve the physics in the models that the National hurricane Center uses to track the storms.

He also mentioned that his role afforded him opportunity to learn.

Hazelton is quoted as saying in his NOAA bio. “Growing up in Florida, I experienced several hurricanes, and it thrills me to be able to study and analyze them in my career.”

Other departments in where employees were fired include the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, and the division that develops and improves the United States’ weather models.

President Donald Trump of the United States

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