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Trump administration has set Noaa on ‘non-science trajectory’, workers warn
The Trump administration has shunted one of the US federal government’s top scientific agencies onto a “non-science trajectory”, workers warn, that threatens to derail decades of research and leave the US with “air that’s not breathable and water that’s not drinkable”.Workers and scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) are warning of the drastic impacts of cuts at the agency on science, research, and efforts to protect natural resources.“The problems are still there. We still have harmful algal blooms, we still have fisheries that are collapsing, waters you can’t swim in. These problems don’t go away because we fired all the people who were trying to solve a problem,” said one Noaa veteran, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “How do you save the arms and legs or the feet and hands when the core is dying?”The longtime research scientist with more than 20 years at Noaa has taken early retirement. “I left because it was just so demoralizing and fearful and scary,” they said.Trump administration officials are seeking to abolish the scientific research division at Noaa, the Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (Oar) office. It is the latest of a series of cuts at the agency that began the second Trump administration with 12,000 employees around the world, including more than 6,700 engineers and scientists.The cuts are disrupting the collection of data sets, including recordings of global temperatures in the air and ocean, and that data cannot be replaced, said the Noaa veteran.The dismantling of Noaa, they said, would harm work in many areas, from finding solutions to combat harmful algae and improving sustainable fisheries to work on new medicines and industrial products and collecting information for disaster preparation.“We can look at other countries that are actively making these mistakes, where they have air that’s not breathable and water that’s not drinkable,” they said. “I think it’s done. I think this is done. The enemies are in the gate. I don’t see any indication so far of anyone stopping it. They’re just letting it burn. I honestly don’t understand how US science will recover.”More than 800 probationary employees at the agency were fired, reinstated, then refired this month. Employees have reported having their firings backdated and having their health insurance canceled even though premiums were being taken out of their paychecks.Rachel Brittin, worked as the federal deputy director of external affairs at Noaa before she was fired, then reinstated, then fired again as a probationary employee, with just a few months left on her two-year probation.“The whole situation is a mess,” she said. “How is Noaa going to be able to keep up with the services it provides? I don’t know. I don’t know how that’s going to happen, but it’s very scary to me. The loss of anybody at Noaa is directly connected to services lost by every individual in the United States.”Contractors for the agency have been furloughed as all Noaa contracts over $100,000 have to now be approved by Trump’s Department of Commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick.Doge has slated 31 offices and building leases at Noaa for termination around the US. Nearly $4m in funding to Princeton University as part of a cooperative agreement with Noaa was cancelled on 8 April.Fourteen Noaa data services on earthquakes, marine, coastal and estuary science at have been slated for decommissioning, more than twice as many as in 2024.Four regional climate centers providing weather analysis tools and data for 21 states in the US have gone dark after lapses in funding, with the remaining two covering the US set to face a funding lapse in June.A reduction in force plan to cut an additional 10% of the agency’s workforce is anticipated and at least several hundred workers have taken voluntary buyouts or early retirement according to Noaa workers interviewed by the Guardian, though Noaa and the Department of Commerce did not disclose the numbers.“It seems clear that the actions that have been taken have intentionally reduced our ability to do our jobs,” said a Noaa scientist who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “You’re not expected to get anything done.”They said due to firings, early retirements and resignations, scientific research teams around the agency have been left with gaps of expertise that can’t be replaced.“We are scrambling,” they added. “We are finding workarounds, but its becoming increasingly difficult.”Marty Kardos, a research molecular geneticist at the northwest fisheries science center at Noaa, decided to resign after the agency’s violations of their collective bargaining agreement with workers meant he would be forced to move from Montana to Seattle in a week or resign.“The agency is on a non-science trajectory,” Kardos said, speaking in a personal capacity. “All the plans for research we were making for the upcoming years are out of the window. Morale is extremely bad.”The attrition of scientists and management at Noaa is effectively undermining the agency’s ability to sustainably manage fisheries and identify and recover endangered species, he said.“The agency is essentially, openly hostile to their mission and their people,” Kardos added. “A lot of this seems to be related to deregulation. The agency is responsible for the Endangered Species Act for marine species and one way to hamstring the act without repealing it is to get rid of the scientists who help to implement it.”The cuts come as the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) and the Trump administration have installed allies in key positions at the agency.Neil Jacobs, the Trump nominee for Noaa administrator and acting head of Noaa in the first Trump administration, has yet to be confirmed. Jacobs was caught up in “Sharpiegate” – a bizarre 2019 incident when the White House was accused of altering a Noaa map of the predicted path of Hurricane Dorian with a black marker to support an incorrect claim by Trump that the Florida-bound storm would also hit Alabama.A staffer from Doge, Bryton Shang, announced this month he was appointed as a senior adviser to the Noaa administrator. Shang was one of the two Doge staffers who flew to Los Angeles during the wildfires in January, and attempted to open a large water pump system in California.Erik Noble, dubbed Trump’s “eyes and ears” at Noaa during his first administration, is back at the agency as deputy assistant secretary for oceans and atmosphere and is reviewing contracts at the agency with Keegan McLaughlin, a special assistant at the commerce department and former intern for the 2024 Trump campaign.Noaa was a target of Project 2025, the conservative roadmap for a second Trump administration. That document pushed to “break up NOAA” and labeled the agency “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry”.“Understanding things lets us make decisions that can put us on a track to things getting better. Knowing bad news doesn’t create the bad news. It lets you be prepared to take actions that may let you avoid the worst consequences,” the Noaa scientist at Oar added on the Trump appointees and the authority they are being given over scientific decisions.“Pretending that our resources are inexhaustible doesn’t make them inexhaustible,” they added. “I don’t think people understand the arrogance of thinking: ‘Hey, I think I understand this, even though I know nothing about it.’ This whole antithesis to experts, I don’t understand it. Would you want to do that with your own personal health? Why would you do it with any kind of complex system?”Noaa and the Department of Commerce did not respond to multiple requests for comment. More
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Stock markets rise as Trump backtracks on high China tariffs and firing Fed chair
Stock markets have risen around the world after Donald Trump said his tariffs on China would come down “substantially” and he had “no intention” of firing the chair of the US central bank, Jerome Powell.Weeks of tough talk on trade from White House officials have rattled investors and Trump now appears to be softening his tone. The president told reporters in Washington on Tuesday he planned to be “very nice” to China in trade talks and that tariffs could drop in both countries if they could reach a deal, adding: “It will come down substantially, but it won’t be zero.”Overnight in Asia, Japan’s Nikkei rose by nearly 2%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was up 2.4% and the South Korean Kospi gained 1.6%.The rally spread to Europe in early trading on Wednesday, with the UK’s FTSE 100 index up 1.6%, while the Italian FTSE MIB rose by 1.1%. Germany’s Dax gained 2.6% and France’s Cac 2.1%.Meanwhile, US stocks opened on a high Wednesday morning, with the Dow rallying over 800 points, and the Nasdaq Composite up over 3%. The rally stalled in the afternoon but all the major stock markets managed to end the day higher.On Wednesday, the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, also took a softer, optimistic tone on China in remarks delivered at the Institute of International Finance in Washington DC, saying that China “knows it needs to change”.“If China is serious on less dependence on export-led manufacturing growth and rebalancing toward a domestic economy … let’s rebalance together,” Bessent said. “This is an incredible opportunity.”Bessent told investors in a private meeting on Tuesday that he expects a “de-escalation” of the trade war between China and the US in the “very near future”.“‘America First’ does not mean America alone. To the contrary, it is a call for deeper collaboration and mutual respect among trade partners,” Bessent said on Wednesday.Investor confidence also grew after Trump told reporters he would not fire Powell, the chair of the US Federal Reserve, reversing the previous day’s losses triggered by the president calling the central bank boss a “major loser”.The president has criticised the Fed chair repeatedly for refusing to cut interest rates and last week hinted that he believed he could dismiss Powell before his term as the head of the central bank comes to an end in May next year.Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, last week that Powell’s termination “could not come fast enough”, after the Fed chair raised concerns about the impact of trade tariffs on the American economy.However, the suggestion from the White House that the US central bank will remain independent helped stocks to rise on Wednesday, as well as the prospect of lower tariffs on Chinese imports to the US.The US dollar, which hit a three-year low on Tuesday before recovering, rose by 0.25% against a basket of major currencies.Oil prices also rose on Wednesday, with Brent crude rising above $68 (£51) a barrel amid hopes that lower tariffs will be less damaging to the global economy. The rise was also led by new US sanctions targeting Iranian liquefied petroleum gas and the crude oil shipping magnate Seyed Asadoollah Emamjomeh.Meanwhile, gold, which is traditionally viewed by investors as a safe haven asset during volatile periods, retreated from the new high of $3,500 (£2,620) an ounce it hit on Tuesday, to trade at about $3,307. More
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What did Pope Francis think of JD Vance? His view was more than clear | Jan-Werner Mueller
We might never quite know what Pope Francis said to the US vice-president during their very brief meeting on Sunday. In the widely shared video clip, it was hardly audible. The morning after, Francis died, and Vance jetted to visit India, finding time to tweet that his heart went out to the millions of Christians who loved Francis (implying, I suppose, that not all Catholics loved him) and patronizing the dead pontiff by calling one of his homilies “really quite beautiful”).Francis had been as outspoken as could be without naming names, when he criticized Vance in his February letter to US bishops; but he was not just registering his rebuke of Trump and Vance’s cruel treatment of refugees and migrants; he was reacting to a broader trend of instrumentalizing religion for nationalist and authoritarian populism.In February, Vance had an online “close-quarters street fight” with Rory Stewart, the former UK Conservative minister, diplomat and now professor in the practice of grand strategy at the very university from which Vance obtained his law degree. At issue was what to most of us wouldn’t seem an obvious source of social media outrage: the correct reading of St Augustine’s notion of ordo amoris, the right ordering of love.In January, Vance had alluded to the concept in an interview with the Trump courtier Sean Hannity; according to the Catholic convert, it was a “Christian concept” that love and compassion start with family, then extend to neighbors, then nation, and, last and least, reach fellow human beings as such.Stewart had registered skepticism, observing that Vance’s stance was “a bizarre take on John 15:12-13 – less Christian and more pagan tribal. We should start worrying when politicians become theologians, assume to speak for Jesus, and tell us in which order to love.” The infamously very online Vance hit back with: “Just google ‘ordo amoris’.” In typically snarky fashion, Vance then questioned Stewart’s IQ and added that “false arrogance” of the Stewart type “drives so much elite failure over the last 40 years” (never mind what would constitute appropriate or correct arrogance).As plenty of learned observers remarked at the time, complex theological questions will not have bumper-sticker-size answers. But eventually a figure not entirely irrelevant for Catholics weighed in with a view that perhaps carries indeed more weight than those of others. Francis, in a letter to US bishops, instructed the flock that “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. In other words: the human person is not a mere individual, relatively expansive, with some philanthropic feelings!”He added, driving home the rebuke without naming names, that “the true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’ … that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.” Apparently, Cardinal Pietro Parolin was dispatched on Saturday to explain all this to Vance again.Vance is not the only far-right populist who has smuggled nationalism into what he touts as the correct notion of Christianity. Viktor Orbán, a great model for Vance and other self-declared US “post-liberals” (meaning: anti-liberals), has been declaring for years that a proper understanding of “Christian Democracy” is not only “illiberal”, but nationalist.That would have been news to the many Catholics who experienced nation-building projects in Germany and Italy during the 19th century as outright oppressive. After all, Catholics were suspected of putting loyalty to Rome ahead of civic duties (a suspicion still very much alive in the US when JFK ran for office). Bismarck started the Kulturkampf (the original meaning of culture war) against Catholics in the 1870s; the Vatican forbade the faithful to participate in the political life of unified Italy.Far-right populists claim that only they represent what they call “the real people”. Of course, they have to explain who “the real people” are (and, who by contrast, does not truly belong). Many have instrumentalized Christianity for that purpose. Giorgia Meloni, in her autobiography, states: “The Christian identity can be secular rather than religious.” What matters is not believing (let alone actual Christian conduct), but only belonging. It’s what the social scientist Rogers Brubaker has called “Christianism”, in contrast with actual Christianity.Some far-right populists have tried to square their Catholicism with their populism by criticizing the hierarchy as a somehow illegitimate, or at least hypocritical, elite. Italy’s Matteo Salvini, who likes to flaunt the Bible and a rosary when riling up the masses of “real” Italians, pioneered this move; Vance copied it when he insinuated that there was something corrupt about church leadership; concretely he had accused US bishops of resettling “illegal immigrants” in order to obtain federal funds (an accusation deemed “very nasty” by Cardinal Timothy Dolan).The point is not that the correct understanding of Catholicism (or Christian Democratic political parties, as they have existed in Europe and Chile) has always been liberal; that’s hardly plausible. The point is that Francis reaffirmed that Catholicism is not compatible with the “America first” (and humanity last) view of the Trumpists.
Jan-Werner Müller is a Guardian US columnist and a professor of politics at Princeton University More
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Trump news at a glance: president will be ‘very nice’ to China; Musk to step back from Doge
Donald Trump has said tariffs on goods from China will be reduced “substantially” but “won’t be zero”, after US treasury secretary Scott Bessent said he expects a “de-escalation” in the trade war between the world’s two largest economies.Trump placed import taxes of 145% on China, which countered with 125% tariffs on US goods, causing volatility in the stock market and concern about slowing global economic growth.But the US president on Tuesday said he would be “very nice” to China and not play hardball with Chinese President Xi Jinping. “We’re going to live together very happily and ideally work together,” Trump said.Meanwhile, Tesla chief executive Elon Musk said he would start pulling back from his role at the “department of government efficiency” (Doge) from May, as the company reported a massive dip in profits amid backlash against his White House role.Here are the key stories at a glance:Treasury secretary says high tariffs unsustainableThe treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has said that he expects a “de-escalation” in the trade war between the US and China and that the high tariffs are unsustainable.“I do say China is going to be a slog in terms of the negotiations,” Bessent said, according to a transcript obtained by the Associated Press. “Neither side thinks the status quo is sustainable.”In response, Donald Trump said during a White House news conference that high tariffs on goods from China will “come down substantially”.Read the full storyIMF warns of ‘major negative shock’ from Trump’s tariffsDonald Trump’s tariffs have unleashed a “major negative shock” into the world economy, the International Monetary Fund has said, as it cut its forecasts for US, UK and global growth. The Washington-based lender cut its forecast for global GDP growth to 2.8% for this year – 0.5% weaker than it was expecting as recently as January.Read the full storyMusk to pull back from Doge amid 71% dip in Tesla profitsOn a Tesla investor call, Elon Musk said the work necessary to get the government’s “financial house in order is mostly done”. His comments came after the company reported a massive dip in both profits and revenues in the first quarter of 2025.“Starting probably next month, May, my time allocation to Doge will drop significantly,” he said.Read the full storyUS lawmakers decry student detentions on visit to Ice jailsCongressional lawmakers denounced the treatment of Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk, the students being detained by US immigration authorities for their pro-Palestinian activism, as a “national disgrace” during a visit to the two facilities in Louisiana where each are being held.Read the full storyRFK Jr calls sugar ‘poison’ but says government probably can’t eliminate itThe US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, on has called sugar “poison” and recommended that Americans eat “zero” added sugar in their food.He acknowledged that the federal government was unlikely to be able to eliminate it from products, but said better labeling was needed for foods and that new government guidelines on nutrition would recommend people avoid sugar completely.Read the full storyTrump says he has no plans to fire Fed chief Donald Trump has said he has no plans to fire the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, and suggested the draconian tariffs the US has imposed on China could be lowered.The president’s comments come days after he called the central bank boss a “major loser” whose “termination cannot come fast enough” and defended his tariffs after they triggered stock market sell-offs.Read the full storyRubio announces sweeping changes to US state departmentThe secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has announced a proposed reorganisation of the US state department as part of what he called an effort to reform it amid criticism from the Trump White House over the execution of US diplomacy.Read the full storyHegseth blames ousted officials for leaks The embattled US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has defended his most recent use of the encrypted messaging app Signal to discuss sensitive military operations, blaming fired Pentagon officials for orchestrating leaks against the Trump administration.Read the full story150 US university presidents decry Trump administrationMore than 150 presidents of US colleges and universities have signed a statement denouncing the Trump administration’s “unprecedented government overreach and political interference” with higher education – the strongest sign yet that US educational institutions are forming a unified front against the government’s extraordinary attack on their independence.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:
Former vice-president Al Gore said the Trump administration was “trying to create their own preferred version of reality”, akin to the Nazi party in 1930s Germany.
Larry David wrote a spoof essay in response to Bill Maher’s recent glowing account of his dinner with Trump in the White House.
JD Vance has said the 21st century could be a “dark time for humanity” without a close India-US alliance.
Catching up? Here’s what happened on 21 April 2025. More - in US Politics
The Guardian view on the IMF’s warning: Donald Trump could cost the world a trillion dollars | Editorial
Wake up! When the most sober of global institutions, the International Monetary Fund, abandons its usual technocratic calm to sound the alarm on the political roots of global financial instability, it’s time to pay attention. The IMF is warning of a non-negligible risk of a $1tn hit to global output, as Donald Trump’s erratic “America first” agenda – part oligarchic enrichment scheme, part mobster shakedown – collides with a perfect storm of global financial vulnerabilities.Such a shock would be equivalent to a third of that experienced in the 2008 crisis. But it would be felt in a much more fragile and politically charged environment. This time, the crisis stems not just from markets but from the politics at the heart of the dollar system. The IMF’s latest Global Financial Stability Report sees the danger in Mr Trump’s trade policies, especially his “liberation day” announcements, which have pushed up America’s effective tariff rate to the highest in over 100 years.The IMF put investors on notice that Trumpian volatility was taking place as US debt and equities – especially tech stocks – were overvalued. It cautions that hedge funds have made huge bets that have gone sour, requiring them to sell US treasuries for cash and potentially deepening the chaos in bond markets. Ominously, the IMF draws the comparison, first made by the analyst Nathan Tankus, with the “dash for cash” in March 2020 during Covid, when the Federal Reserve rescued US treasury markets directly. Developing nations, already grappling with the highest real borrowing costs in a decade, may now be forced to take on even more expensive debt – the IMF warns – just to cushion the blow from Mr Trump’s new tariffs, risking a dreaded “sudden stop” in capital flows.At the heart of this chaos stands the US, the very country meant to uphold the global financial architecture. Just over a week ago, Adam Tooze of Columbia University wondered if markets had begun to “sell America” after US long-maturity bond prices fell precipitously. He thought that markets were no longer just responding to economic fundamentals but to politics as a systemic risk factor. In this case: Mr Trump’s tariff threats and his increasing political pressure on Fed’s chair, Jerome Powell. In essence, Prof Tooze gave us the theory; the IMF just confirmed the data.The US president’s continued attacks on the Fed chair over the weekend have only added to a flight from US equities, bonds and the dollar itself. The money is fleeing to safe havens such as gold. Some of the loss has been clawed back, but at what cost? Investors aren’t just jittery about inflation or growth – they’re hedging against political chaos. That might explain the seemingly divergent IMF messaging: blunt systemic warnings in its report versus the soothing market-facing comments from a senior official at the fund’s press conference. This is central bank diplomacy. The institution is signalling that it is worried while trying not to spark a self-fulfilling panic in treasuries and the dollar.The real concern here is not technical dysfunction in treasury markets or the mechanics of the Fed, which are the bedrock of the global financial system. It’s about the politicisation of the monetary-fiscal nexus under a Trumpian regime that is fundamentally hostile to the norms of liberal-democratic governance. When even the dollar is no longer a safe haven, what – or who – can be?Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More
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Yes, I’m a half-Palestinian lesbian, but I dream of being a Republican congresswoman. Here’s my six-point plan | Arwa Mahdawi
My haters are going to rejoice when I say this, but I think it’s high time I changed careers. Being a half Palestinian, wholly homosexual freelance writer based in the US isn’t currently looking like the most stable situation. Either my livelihood is going to get obliterated by AI, or I’m getting shipped to a detention centre for thoughtcrimes and gender treachery. It’s anyone’s guess which comes first.Having mulled over the various directions my future could take (dog-cloning saleswoman, astronaut, head of sanitation for the city of Philadelphia), I have finally decided what I want to be when I grow up. And I’m going to exclusively reveal the result in this column. I’m … going into politics!Once upon a time, the fact that I have zero experience in politics may have been an impediment. In a country run by a reality TV star turned convicted felon, however, the criteria for what qualifies one for office have drastically changed. The fact that I am a permanent resident rather than a US citizen would also normally pose a problem, but the beauty of Trumpworld is that all the silly old laws from the past are getting ripped up. Anything – even Republican congresswoman Arwa – is possible if you abandon your principles and play your cards right.And I intend to play my cards perfectly. I have done extensive research and devised a cunning plan for how to make it in modern American politics. Study it carefully and you too can be as successful as I am obviously going to be.1. Become a billionaire and buy yourself a roleAmbassadorships have, in effect, always been pay-to-play in the US but, thanks to the self-proclaimed “GREATEST FRIEND THAT AMERICAN CAPITALISM HAS EVER HAD!”, the entire government is now for sale. You can seemingly buy yourself everything from a nice little foreign policy to a cabinet position. Never has democracy been so democratised: anyone with enough cash can participate. The only snag to this strategy is that I do not, in fact, have enough cash. Like many a feckless millennial I squandered all my “political influence” money on avocado toast.2. Become a billionaire’s special little boyIf you can’t become a billionaire yourself, find one you can sell your soul to: it’s what I call the JD Vance manoeuvre. The vice-president would still be writing about hillbillies were it not for tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s mentorship and piles of money.3. Achieve notoriety through whatever means possibleShould you be unable to locate a billionaire who wants to use you as an avatar to advance their dystopian accelerationist agenda, you will have to master the dark arts of the trollitician. John Fetterman (nominally a Democrat) and far-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene both seem to have advanced their careers by modelling themselves on internet trolls. Fetterman wanders around in basketball shorts, chumming it up with accused war criminals, and praising Trump for his “God-tier level trolling”; Greene spreads conspiracy theories about governments controlling the weather. Meanwhile, a Republican candidate for governor of California, clearly hoping to achieve name recognition through virality, has proposed that migrant women can stay in the country if they “marry one of our Californian incels”.4. Harness the potential of “A1” technologyDuring a recent panel discussion, former wrestling mogul turned education secretary Linda McMahon – who may or may not be in that position because she donated handsomely to Trump’s campaign – repeatedly referred to AI as A1. “Now let’s see A1 and how can that be helpful,” McMahon mused at one point. Food for thought.5. Share your top-secret plans in multiple group chatsThe Trump administration, we keep being told, is the most transparent in history. If you want to get ahead, you’ll have to embrace that ethos. For more information, go find Pete “nobody’s texting war plans” Hegseth on Signal – he’ll fill you in on all the deets. Along with his brother, lawyer, wife, and some random dude he once met in a bar.6. Finally, sit back and watch your net worth riseGetting your foot in the door is the hard part. Once you’re in, the job’s a breeze: cancel all your public events and ignore your constituents, stat. Like Marjorie Taylor Greene, focus on making extremely well-timed trades in the stock market. If you bump into a pesky constituent, post a video of yourself ranting at them in the skincare aisle, as South Carolina congresswoman Nancy Mace just did. Most importantly, remember JFK’s famous quote: “Ask not what you can do for your country, but what your country can do for you.” That’s how it goes, right? More
