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Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) make a statement on the congressional budget in April 2025. <\/p>\n
\t\t\t\tGet your news from a source that\u2019s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.<\/a><\/p>\n This story was originally published by\u00a0Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists<\/a> and is reproduced here as part of the\u00a0Climate Desk<\/a>\u00a0collaboration.<\/p>\n The United States is hurtling towards a potential government shutdown if Congress does not pass a budget or short-term funding bill by the end of the month, and the fate of the federal government\u2019s Earth and climate science programs may hang in the balance.<\/p>\n President Donald Trump has proposed vast, devastating cuts to these agencies, many of which target programs dedicated to studying and preparing for climate change. In the event of a shutdown, the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB, has\u00a0told agencies<\/a>\u00a0to consider layoffs or reductions in force for \u201call employees\u201d in all \u201cprograms, projects, or activities\u201d with lapsed funding that are \u201cnot consistent with the President\u2019s priorities.\u201d<\/p>\n As Sophia Cai\u00a0notes<\/a>\u00a0in Politico, this is starkly different from how previous government shutdowns were handled, when federal workers were temporarily furloughed and returned to work when funding was restored. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer characterized the memo as an \u201cattempt at intimidation.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you cut holes in the mosaic\u2026It has an impact on people\u2019s lives and their livelihoods\u2026.We are really hurting our civil defenses.\u201d<\/p>\n Bobby Kogan, a former OMB official with the Biden administration, said the direction may not be legal. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t seem to me that they would really be able to legally do that additional work during a shutdown\u2014and it doesn\u2019t seem to me that they\u2019d be able to get it all done beforehand,\u201d Kogan told the\u00a0Federal News Network<\/a>. \u201cSo either this is something they were planning to do anyway, and they are just using this as a pretext, or it\u2019s a threat to try to get what they want.\u201d<\/p>\n Organizations that represent the interests of public workers have been more explicit: \u201cThe plan to exploit a shutdown to purge federal workers is illegal, unconstitutional, and deeply disturbing,\u201d Tim Whitehouse, the executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said\u00a0in a statement<\/a>. \u201cA shutdown triggers furloughs, not firings. To weaponize it as a tool to destroy the civil service would mark a dangerous slide into lawlessness and further consolidate power in the Executive Branch.\u201d<\/p>\n But illegality (or possible illegality) would not necessarily stop the Trump administration from choosing the layoff route if a budget deal is not reached. In any case, the memo obviously creates uncertainty and anxiety for the federal scientists whose work has been singled out for steep funding cuts or even elimination by the Trump administration.<\/p>\n \u201cEither we all go home or it\u2019s business as usual\u2026nobody knows what\u2019s going to happen,\u201d one NASA scientist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told the\u00a0Bulletin.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, the president submitted\u00a0a budget request<\/a>\u00a0to Congress that would slash NASA\u2019s overall 2026 budget by 24 percent. It is the clearest indication of what his priorities are going into a possible government shutdown. The steepest cuts were within science programs, which the president proposed reducing by more than 46 percent. Funding for Earth science programs specifically would be cut by more than half.<\/p>\n Proposed\u00a0cuts to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) research<\/a>\u00a0are also severe, outright eliminating the entire budget for climate research, weather and air chemistry research, and the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR). (In addition to cuts to Earth and climate science, the proposed budget recommends cutting all funding for habitat conservation and research, as well as ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes research.)<\/p>\n Although the White House recommended cutting NOAA\u2019s budget\u00a0by up to 30 percent<\/a>, members of the House Appropriations Committee\u00a0have recommended a much smaller cut<\/a>\u00a0of 6 percent. But by telling agencies to conduct layoffs based on the president\u2019s priorities, the Trump administration could try to preempt Congress and reshape the federal government in line with their\u00a0own vision and budget proposal<\/a>\u00a0during a shutdown.<\/p>\n Even without a government shutdown, a third of the US Geological Survey\u2019s Climate Adaptation Science Centers could\u00a0wind down or cease operations<\/a>\u00a0this week because the Interior Department is refusing to submit paperwork to release funding.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a dismantling of efforts in the United States on climate science, and in fact, in large swaths of environmental science. And I don\u2019t think that people know that,\u201d Elisabeth Moyer, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Chicago, told the\u00a0Bulletin. \u201cThis is wholesale destruction, what\u2019s proposed.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe are not talking about trying to find water on Mars. We are talking about understanding what\u2019s happening on our planet.\u201d<\/p>\n There are at least 14 NASA Earth science missions that the Trump administration has proposed terminating. These include an array of satellite-related research (see:\u00a0NASA missions at risk under the Trump administration<\/a>).<\/p>\n The worst-case scenario would be if the government shuts down and agencies begin to comply with the administration\u2019s budget proposal, including the termination of missions. According to a NASA scientist, people have already been instructed to do the preparatory work for ending these satellite and instrument programs, so this is not an impossibility.<\/p>\n The list of projects and programs that the Trump administration has proposed terminating at NOAA is, frankly, shocking. It includes the\u00a0National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science<\/a>, which conducts wide-ranging research on everything from aquaculture to corals to pollution; the\u00a0National Coastal Resilience Fund<\/a>;\u00a0Habitat Conservation and Restoration<\/a>; and OAR\u2019s\u00a0Regional Climate Data and Information<\/a>\u00a0program, which helps communities develop plans for dealing with climate crises like droughts and heat waves.<\/p>\n The budget also recommends terminating funding for OAR\u2019s\u00a0Climate Laboratories and Cooperative Institutes<\/a>, which would result in the closure of the\u00a0Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory<\/a>; the\u00a0Air Resources Laboratory<\/a>; the\u00a0Chemical Sciences Laboratory<\/a>; the\u00a0Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory<\/a>; the\u00a0Global Monitoring Laboratory<\/a>; the\u00a0Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory<\/a>; and the\u00a0Physical Sciences Laboratory<\/a>.<\/p>\n NOAA has already been hard hit under the Trump administration this year. Rick Spinrad, a NOAA administrator under President Biden, said the agency has lost around 2,000 of its 12,000 employees to layoffs, buyouts, resignations, and retirement this year. (Exact figures are remarkably hard to find, but in March the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that the agency was planning to fire another 1,000 workers in addition to the 1,300 workers that had already resigned or been laid off.) Some of the vacancies within the National Weather Service (which is part of NOAA) have resulted in\u00a0reduced operations<\/a>\u00a0at some forecasting stations across the country.<\/p>\n Monica Medina, a principal deputy administrator of NOAA in the Obama administration, compared the work the National Weather Service does to issue weather forecasts to a mosaic. \u201cWhen you cut holes in the mosaic\u2026you\u2019re losing pixels, and so the picture gets fuzzier,\u201d she said. \u201cIt has an impact on people\u2019s lives and their livelihoods. When key vacancies happen, when we cut holes, we are really hurting our civil defenses.\u201d<\/p>\n