Uncertain forecasting and understaffed warning groups

Last Thursday, at least 800 employees of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were laid off. Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been targeting the organization for weeks, and the firings are part of that. The people who lost their jobs include personnel that carry out weather forecasting and work to improve our understanding of climate.

This included meteorologists and computer engineers at the Hurricane Research Division, as well as those who worked for the agency’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, and more. Local, regional, and even global predictions about weather are being affected, making US citizens less safe against extreme weather events, which are on the rise. Such events displaced 2.5 million people in the US last year alone.

NOAA is a vital agency that delivers high-quality environmental and meteorological data. Its work has helped to protect humanity and show the reality of the climate crisis – and the agency has become a target of Project 2025, the far-right manifesto written by The Heritage Foundation and former Trump staffers. Trump claimed he had not read Project 2025 and denied any connection to it, but much of the work done by the current administration implements that manifesto.

Delayed vaccine meetings and an unfolding outbreak

Health and medical sciences are not faring much better under US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Two vaccine policy meetings, including the Food and Drug Administration’s March 13 committee meeting to update next winter’s flu vaccine, have been canceled. This meeting is key for manufacturers to know which strains to include in the next flu shot, which changes each year based on the predictions of which strains will be most prevalent that flu season.

“The abrupt cancellation of the FDA’s next vaccine advisory committee meeting is a deeply concerning development that could delay and disrupt a critical step in production of the annual flu vaccine,” Partnership to Fight Infectious Disease said in a statement.

“Decisions about vaccines must be rooted in evidence. Canceling transparent independent scientific review risks Americans’ health.”

Tens of thousands of people die from influenza in the United States each year. Robert F. Kennedy Jr has been outspoken against vaccines for many years – during his confirmation hearing, US Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i) stressed the role Kennedy played in discouraging the measles vaccine in the Pacific nation of Samoa. The outbreak that followed saw thousands of people infected, and 83 people, mostly children, died as a result.

The US is currently experiencing a measles outbreak, with over 100 people infected across at least two states. An unvaccinated child died from the disease last week, the first victim of measles in the US since 2015. Only on March 3 did Kennedy begin urging people to get the vaccine.

Beyond infectious diseases, the Trump administration has placed new restrictions on employment in the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which could end the careers of thousands of senior scientists. This means an enormous loss of talent in the fight against cancer, degenerative conditions, infectious diseases – you name it. It is also not an effective cost-saving measure since this talent will cost a lot more to replace, and there won’t be a generational exchange of knowledge.

Ted Cruz versus woke mint

The move continues the broader attack on any kind of science that doesn’t pass certain ideological tests from the Trump administration. The NIH reimposed funding freezes that have been described as segregationist to projects that are deemed to promote diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) following a Trump directive – despite said directive violating a federal court order.

Republican senator Ted Cruz has released a list of “woke” grants. “Woke” is a word that originated in the African-American vernacular to stress the importance of being aware of social and political issues affecting Black Americans. This has become a word with negative connotations among many right-wing people.

Among the so-called “woke” science, ProPublica highlighted that this included a device that could treat severe bleeding (woke keywords appearing to be “victims” and “trauma”), creating biosensors that treat infectious disease (woke keyword appearing to be “POC” but not meaning “person of color”, rather “point of care”), and even a study on the spread of the mint plant seemingly because it uses the word “diversify”.

In a previous article, a geology student told IFLScience: “I just have one question for the parties responsible: what do you hope to gain for society by halting science?” The question remains more relevant than ever.