This is a developing story.
An anticipated mass firing of workers started Thursday at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) which could cut more than 10% of the agency’s employees, according to local and national officials.
The firings are part of a mass purge of the federal workforce by the Trump administration, which argues the “federal government is costly, inefficient, and deeply in debt,” according to a memo issued Wednesday by Russell Vought, director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. The cuts at NOAA and other agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service affecting about 10% of employees are being called an initial round, with Vought’s memo laying out a plan for a significantly larger downsizing in the months to come.
Emma Esquivel, executive assistant to Alaska’s National Weather Service director, got her termination email Thursday afternoon, The New York Times reported. The newspaper reports she received the message at 11:39 a.m. Alaska time and was given an hour and 21 minutes before losing access to her computer. The email stated the she was “not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and/or skills do not fit the agency’s current needs.”
“I’m way overqualified, but I wanted to get my foot in the door at NOAA,” said Esquivel, who has a master’s degree in systems engineering. She took the position in November over a better-paying position in the private sector because she wanted the security of a government job.
However, a judge late Thursday ordered the Trump administration on Thursday to retract the firing directives, in response to a lawsuit filed by several labor unions, although the order stops short of stopped short of ordering a halt in the firings, The New York Times reported. As such, the practical implications of the order were not immediately clear.
President Donald Trump said during a Cabinet meeting Wednesday subsequent planned cuts are 65% of the employees at the Environmental Protection Agency, although an EPA spokesperson told The New York Times the president meant the agency’s funding will be cut by 65%. Other potential cuts include 50% of the Social Security Administration’s workforce and virtually all staff at the U.S. Agency for International Development after Trump canceled 90% of the foreign aid contracts, according to published reports.
The NOAA firings, like others launched two weeks ago in what many employees called the “Valentine’s Day Massacre,” target probationary employees — generally hired or recently promoted/reassigned within the past year or two and thus exempt from civil service protections. Unions and other parties have filed lawsuits challenging the legalities of the firings.
Targeting such employees resulted in firing of 80% of the Forest Service staff at the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center, leaving only two employees at Juneau’s biggest tourist attraction. Staff from other Forest Service operations are helping fill in as city and other local officials ponder operating option with cruise ship season less than two months away.
The Hill reported Thursday afternoon that more than 1,800 of NOAA’s nearly 12,000 employees could be targeted during the initial round of firings.
An anonymous NOAA employee in Juneau said the cuts have serious implications for Alaska’s population. The Tsunami Warning Center, National Weather Service and fisheries management all fall under NOAA.
“This is a critical mission, it’s life and property,” he said. “Right now our mission is being totally ripped apart.”
One of the first official announcements from an Alaska weather service station about staffing on Thursday came from Kotzebue.
“Effective Immediately and until further notice, the National Weather Service (NWS) is indefinitely suspending weather balloon launches at Kotzebue, Alaska, due to a lack of WFO staffing,” the notice states. The announcement notes there are 100 upper-air sites in the U.S. and the Caribbean and “in the near term, the affected site will benefit from data collected by balloons launched from neighboring upper air sites, polar and geostationary satellite soundings, and from instruments on aircraft flying into nearby airports.”
Project 2025, which Vought helped draft, describes NOAA as “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry” and says it “should be broken up and downsized.” It also says the industry’s mission emphasis on prediction and management is based around “the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable.” Every year, the National Weather Service Juneau publishes data and assessments about conditions at Suicide Basin, which has released glacial outburst floods since 2011. Hundreds of homes have been damaged by record flooding the past two years, an ongoing danger experts attribute to climate change.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306. Contact Jasz Garrett at jasz.garrett@juneauempire.com or (907) 723-9356.
