Fates of NOAA and FEMA hang in election balance

NOAA and FEMA — the government's weather and disaster agencies — have become politicized, so the election may be pivotal to their futures. Project 2025 recommends cuts to the agencies.

With the neck-and-neck 2024 election just days away, the futures of the federal agencies responsible for weather forecasting, climate change research and disaster recovery hang in the balance. 

Those agencies, namely the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), have become increasingly politicized in recent years despite the offices’ history of remaining above the fray. But with natural disasters fueled by climate change now regularly slamming the U.S. — this year has already seen 24 weather events that each caused at least $1 billion in damage — the agencies have taken on a greater role. And with it, they’ve become a target for some conservatives who are skeptical of climate change and want to slash government budgets.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has promised deep cuts to federal budgets, and Elon Musk, one of his most vocal surrogates, said last week that he would cut at least $2 trillion from the budget if he served in a second Trump administration. Project 2025, a 922-page conservative policy road map put together by the Heritage Foundation, a right-leaning think tank, recommends that NOAA be “broken up and downsized” and takes aim at FEMA, suggesting that much of the financial burden for disaster recovery be shifted to state and local governments. 

That could dramatically change what disaster relief looks like in the United States.

“It almost becomes unthinkable that states would ever be able to recover without long, costly recovery periods that would come out of state and local budgets,” said Craig Fugate, who served as FEMA’s administrator under the Obama administration.

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/election-noaa-fema-fates-project-2025-rcna177722

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