‘We Just Want to Get Back to Work’: NOAA Hurricane Hunter Speaks Out After Trump’s Layoffs

Less than a month into the second term of Donald Trump, the president signed an executive order that gave the non-governmental Department of Government Efficiency broad powers to gut the federal workforce, in the name of cost-cutting. DOGE—led by the multibillionaire “special government employee” Elon Musk—has proceeded with zeal, working to scrap funding for veterans’ cancer treatments, reportedly cutting FDA employees directly working on Musk’s company Neuralink, slashing (and then walking back) layoffs in the National Nuclear Security Administration, cutting about 1,000 staff working for the National Park Service across the country, and this month, after a faltering start, beginning layoffs at NASA, the nation’s space agency. During the final week of February, hundreds of federal workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were fired—about 10% of the agency workforce. One of the affected employees was Andrew Hazelton, a meteorologist who grew up in Florida and u ... Read full article.