national oceanic and atmospheric administration

The news came late Thursday afternoon that the Musk tornado had reached NOAA, the government agency responsible for, among many other things, warning us about actual tornadoes. Ten percent of the staff was instantly given pink slips, and an hour to leave; with thousands more firings expected imminently. The wording on the termination letters seems to have been uniform; the work these people were doing was not considered “in the public interest.”

I want to bear a little witness to the people fired from NOAA and so many other places—and even more to the long and careful tradition of which they were a part. For the moment I don’t know what we can do to protect those people or that tradition—there will be court battles, and we should support them; general defense against President Donald Trump’s absurd and illegal destruction is ongoing at places like Third Act and Indivisible and you should join in. But for now, I simply want to explain what’s being destroyed.