The Trump administration’s firing of federal employees is set to continue at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on Tuesday. According to a memo leaked to the New York Times, the agency is being directed to cut 1,000 employees across its various departments.

The scheduled cuts are in addition to the estimated 1,300 layoffs or resignations that have already occurred since Trump took office. These include job eliminations at the National Weather Service (NWS), which is responsible for tracking hurricanes and other extreme weather events, as well as the forecasts that millions in the US and internationally rely on every day.

The NWS is also the origin of essentially every weather report on every news program and web app. This includes AccuWeather, the Weather Channel, Weather Underground and more. There are hundreds of weather stations placed all around the US, as well as around the world, that keep track of precipitation, cloud cover, air quality and numerous other fundamental metrics essential to modern life.

NOAA was one of the chief targets of Trump’s diatribes against climate science during his campaign. Once inaugurated, the president directed fascist oligarch Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to hunt down those doing research on “climate science” or the “climate crisis” in the administration and target them for removal.

Opposition to the cuts at NOAA has been widespread, as evidenced by the many supporters of the agency who came to the Stand Up for Science rallies last Friday. Approximately 3,000 people attended the main rally, held outside the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. Among the attendees were many federal workers from affected agencies, such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The speakers at the rally included NIH Director Francis Collins, Nobel Prize-winning biologist Victor Ambros, former senator and head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Bill Nelson and celebrity scientist Bill Nye.

While the headline speakers limited themselves to empty appeals to the Democrats, others spoke on the impact of science on their lives and the detrimental impacts the attacks on science will have or are already occurring. Emily Whitehead, a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania, spoke of her diagnosis of acute lymphoblastic leukemia when she was only five years old and how she had become the first pediatric patient to receive chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy that saved her life. Without the research funding into development of her cancer treatment, Whitehead said, “I wouldn’t be here today. I stand up for science so kids can grow up to be the next generation of scientists.”

Reporters for the World Socialist Web Site spoke to several attendees, including two from NOAA and one from the NIH. They commented on the atmosphere of fear among federal workers, causing many to be afraid to speak out. One noted that half her probationary staff were among the first wave of forced layoffs.

There is also a concern that some or all of the functions of the agency will be privatized. While it is not yet clear exactly what form that would take, there is no doubt the main goal would be to use the resources and data products generated by the NOAA to further enrich Musk and his ilk, rather than providing critical weather and climate data for the world’s population.

A letter signed by numerous organizations, including the American Geophysical Union, noted further the dangers of the cuts to NOAA’s critical services. “NOAA has provided life-saving weather forecasting, scientific research, and emergency preparedness services to the American people for more than 50 years,” the letter began.

It continued, “Whether it’s tracking hurricanes or safeguarding the country’s fisheries, NOAA is vital to the everyday lives and operations of countless communities and businesses that stretch across our nation and the world.”

One of the main programs run by the agency is the GOES satellite constellation, which has been in operation since 1974. The four satellites currently operational form the backbone of weather monitoring and forecasting in the US and internationally and provide a continuous stream of environmental data. Without such programs, weather forecasting would be set back at least five decades, if not more.

The WSWS spoke to demonstrators at other Stand Up for Science rallies as well. In New York City, a research assistant working for a group affiliated with New York University, spoke on the cuts in funding:

Research in various aspects of reproduction needs to be funded, and we need to be paid well in order to continue providing good science: how a pregnant mother passes things on through the environment to her unborn child; how the environment impacts maternal health and how it will impact a new generation.

A college math teacher told the WSWS, “I’m here because my NIH-funded science is at risk. And Trump in cutting science funding is not following the rule of law, he’s not even going through Congress. He’s cutting funding for scientific research that Congress has already appropriated.

I do computational modeling of allocation of organs for transplantation; the xenotransplantation that is being done is all about using pig kidneys in humans to keep them alive. Those are transgenic animals, not transgender animals, as Trump implied—those are transgenic pigs keeping people who need a kidney transplant alive!

She also spoke on Trump’s immigration policies:

It’s really unfair! A lot of really important scientific advancements have been made by immigrants who came to this country. We have always benefited by having the brightest and most ambitious scientists coming to this country. Government-funded science is the backbone of a huge amount of industry and healthcare. It’s what makes the US a great place to live—We need government-funded science.

She also spoke on the importance of international collaboration in scientific endeavors, while contrasting it to Trump’s fascist “America First” nationalism:

Nature and scientific truth doesn’t know about borders. Look at the COVID-19 vaccine. The reason we were able to develop that so quickly is because of the help we got from our science partners in other countries. We got the whole code for the virus and made the vaccine in a matter of days. It doesn’t make sense to make enemies of the world.

And now Musk doesn’t want funding that would be used to stop Ebola in Africa. Does he really think it’s not going to spread across the rest of the planet? We’re all in this together. We really are.

Keeping people’s lives precarious prevents people from making progress in all kinds of areas. Keeping people’s lives precarious prevents them from opposing the retrograde decisions this government is making. We all need to be okay so we can start making our own decisions on how things should be going forward.