Trump’s NOAA pick appears in confirmation hearing days after Texas floods
U.S. senators are set to interview President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Wednesday in a confirmation hearing that may be charged with concern over whether massive cuts to the agency’s workforce may have contributed to the deaths of more than 100 people when torrential rain flooded Central Texas early Friday.
In the five months since Trump chose Neil Jacobs to serve as NOAA administrator, hundreds of NOAA scientists and meteorologists have left the agency through firings, buyouts and retirements. The departures hit some National Weather Service offices so hard, they could no longer maintain 24/7 operations.
And as the deadly floods hit Texas Hill Country, the staff losses meant the nearest weather forecasting office was without a veteran meteorologist responsible for training local authorities, emergency managers and news media on how to respond to its severe weather warnings.
The Weather Service has faced bipartisan scrutiny since the floods hit, with Texas officials asking why its forecasts didn’t predict the historic deluge and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) calling for an inspector general investigation into the role staffing shortages might have played.
Jacobs is separately likely to face pointed questioning from Democrats over his involvement in an episode from Trump’s first term that became known as “Sharpiegate,” when, in a 2019 Oval Office briefing, Trump displayed a NOAA forecast map that appeared to have been altered with a marker to depict Hurricane Dorian threatening Alabama. An investigation found that Jacobs violated the agency’s scientific integrity policy when he oversaw the release of a statement that backed Trump’s claim about the hurricane’s path and contradicted meteorologists at a Weather Service forecast office in Birmingham, Alabama.
NOAA, housed within the Department of Commerce, is responsible not just for the Weather Service, but also research offices studying Earth science and climate change, and divisions that monitor and manage key aquatic life and valuable commercial fisheries. Its buoys, weather stations and satellites provide a detailed picture of the planet that is seen as essential to keeping various industries running.
The agency has a more than $6 billion budget, but Trump has proposed cutting it by more than one-fourth in a budget document recently sent to Congress.
Jacobs previously served as acting NOAA administrator from February 2019 until the end of Trump’s first term in January 2021. Trump had initially in 2017 nominated Barry Myers, former CEO of private weather forecasting company AccuWeather, to lead NOAA, but Myers withdrew his nomination, citing health concerns.
A Senate committee approved Jacobs’s previous nomination as NOAA administrator in 2020, but the full chamber did not confirm him before Trump’s term ended.
Jacobs has emphasized a need for the United States to improve the accuracy of its weather forecasting models, which routinely perform worse than models operated in Europe and, at times, Canada. He has most recently served as chief science adviser for the Unified Forecast System, an initiative he has spearheaded to improve U.S. weather and climate forecasting accuracy using government, academic and private-sector data.
Jacobs has made no public statements about the Trump administration’s proposed cuts, which could affect some of the modeling capabilities that Jacobs has championed.
Trump has in recent days defended his administration’s changes to NOAA and the Weather Service.
When asked by reporters if the floods in Texas suggest a need to hire back some Weather Service meteorologists who have recently left, he said: “I wouldn’t know that. I really wouldn’t. I would think not.”
And Trump said he doesn’t blame meteorologists for the large death toll in Texas — nor does he blame local officials, summer camp organizers or even former President Joe Biden, whose administration he said was responsible for the “setup” of the Weather Service office.
“I would just say this is a 100-year catastrophe,” he told reporters. “And it’s just so horrible to watch.”
In a virtual NOAA town hall held Tuesday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick praised the Weather Service — at one point reassuring workers that Trump appreciates them and thinks they “save lives” — but downplayed any effects of staffing shortages at the agency’s regional offices across the country. Lutnick suggested Weather Service meteorologists should be able to work from anywhere to produce forecasts because of their access to what he described as “the world’s best data,” according to two employees who attended the town hall and described it to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly and feared retaliation.
But in a letter Monday to the Commerce Department’s acting inspector general, Schumer suggested that the Weather Service positions left vacant are “critical” and “help save lives.”
“To honor the lives of those lost, we have a responsibility to the American people to determine whether preventable failures contributed to this tragedy — and ensure that it never happens again,” Schumer wrote.
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Matt Viser and Holly Bailey contributed.