NOAA Supporters Protest Mass Layoffs

Supporters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration assembled outside the agency’s headquarters in Maryland on Monday to protest the Trump administration’s mass layoffs of probationary employees last week. Protesters also gathered in front of a NOAA building in Colorado on Monday, with more than 1,000 attendees, according to police estimates.

The layoffs occurred the same day a judge ruled that mass layoffs carried out at the behest of the Office of Personnel Management are illegal, though it is not yet clear how this might affect the NOAA layoffs. (Today, OPM altered its guidance to state that agencies have the “ultimate decisionmaking authority” over layoffs.)

At least 880 employees were laid off, according to Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), the top Democrat on the Senate panel that oversees NOAA. The New York Times also reported that about 500 more employees left the agency on Friday after taking the “fork in the road” deal from OPM, which offered federal employees a chance to resign and keep their pay and benefits through September, though lawmakers and others have warned that the deal may not be honored. In combination with the layoffs, this represents about a 10% cut in the agency’s 12,000 total employees.

“This agency is grossly under-resourced with only 12,000 staff. There needs to be another 5,000 at least. So don’t start saying we can cut and still get all the services we need,” said Rick Spinrad, who led NOAA during the Biden administration, at the Maryland rally.

All of NOAA’s services, including daily weather forecasts, space weather forecasts, nautical charts, and fisheries management, cost each American a total of six cents a day, Spinrad said. “So don’t come looking to NOAA to look for savings. In fact, what you need to do is to be investing even more in what this agency does,” he added.

Democratic lawmakers from the D.C. metropolitan area spoke at the rally to show their support for NOAA workers, including Sen. Chris Van Hollen (MD) and Reps. April McClain Delaney (MD), Don Beyer (VA), Glenn Ivey (MD), and Jamie Raskin (MD).

“You know why they’re trying to do all this stuff unilaterally, arbitrarily, monarchically. They could never abolish NOAA if they brought that as a bill to the United States House of Representatives,” Raskin said. “If you think you want to abolish one of the departments or agencies we’ve created, bring it to Congress and put it up for a vote.”

Beyond the ongoing layoffs, the White House has also instructed agency heads to submit plans for large-scale reductions in force (RIFs) and reorganization. One of the plans, due by April 14, must also cover any proposals to relocate agency offices from the D.C. area to lower-cost parts of the country.

Outpouring of support

The scale of the layoffs has been criticized by the American Meteorological Society, which released a statement Monday warning of consequences for the weather enterprise, including the private businesses and non-governmental organizations that use NOAA’s services and the universities that rely on NOAA data and models to train the future workforce.

“Recent terminations within the government workforce for science are likely to cause irreparable harm and have far-reaching consequences for public safety, economic well-being, and the United States’ global leadership,” AMS said in the statement. (AMS is an AIP Member Society.)

The layoffs even drew criticism from a top NOAA official from the first Trump administration, Tim Gallaudet, who told NPR, “There’s a smarter way to do this. I don’t think you need to slash and burn NOAA or any other federal agency.”

Some of the speakers at the Maryland rally on Monday highlighted programs that have been severely impacted by the layoffs, including the ocean acidification team and weather forecast offices in Boise and Boston. Tom Di Liberto, who was laid off from his position as a public affairs specialist and climate scientist at NOAA, told FYI that the Office of Communication lost seven employees out of a team of 25, including the entire external affairs team. He also said the agency’s Environmental Modeling Center lost 11 employees.

“Some would say we were already falling behind some of our modeling, and by firing folks like this here, there’s no way you can catch up,” Di Liberto said. “It’s a weird way of making America great.”

Other units hit by the layoffs include the National Weather Service, the National Severe Storms Lab, the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab, and the Office of Space Commerce, among others.

OPM seen as trigger of layoffs

Di Liberto said he was two weeks away from completing his two-year probationary period at the agency at the time of his firing. He received an email Thursday afternoon, addressed from the agency’s acting administrator, that said he was unfit for continued employment because his “ability, knowledge and/or skills do not fit the agency’s current needs,” citing OPM guidance that “a probationer has ‘the burden to demonstrate why it is in the public interest for the government to finalize an appointment to the civil service for this particular individual.’” Other laid-off employees said they received the same language.

NOAA submitted a list of about 1,100 total probationary employees to OPM. Di Liberto said he is not sure why a few hundred of these probationary employees were spared, but noted that he has not yet heard of anyone being laid off who was probationary due to a recent promotion.

Di Liberto also said he is not sure whether the judge’s ruling on Thursday means he and his former co-workers will be reinstated. The judge found that OPM does not have the authority to direct other agencies to make layoffs. As of Tuesday afternoon, Di Liberto had not received any word from the agency regarding his position.

“Believe me, the letter I got was very clearly OPM directives,” Di Liberto said. “We’re all waiting to see if this will get thrown out and we get reinstated.”

At least one agency is reversing layoffs as a result of the decision: the National Science Foundation notified all staff on Monday morning that probationary employees are being reinstated immediately. NSF spokesperson Michael England told FYI that the reinstatement applies to 84 of the 86 probationary employees who were laid off last month.