DOGE Staffers Enter Headquarters of NOAA, Another Project 2025 Target

President Trump has nominated Neil Jacobs to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, turning to the man who was his acting NOAA chief in 2019 when Trump altered an expected hurricane impact map in what became known as the "Sharpiegate" scandal, the AP reports. After Alabama meteorologists had contradicted an earlier Trump tweet warning of Alabama being in a storm's path, the Jacobs-led agency chastised them. That eventually drew criticism of Jacobs and his political higher-ups in a Department of Commerce inspector general's report on Sharpiegate.

Along with many other federal agencies, NOAA was targeted in Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for change in a second Trump administration. That document called to "break up NOAA," criticizing the agency as "one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry." On Tuesday, staffers with Elon Musk's DOGE entered NOAA headquarters in Maryland, sparking alarm that layoffs are coming, the Guardian reports. "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," says a former NOAA official. "They will have access to the entire computer system, a lot of which is confidential information."

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