As devastating floods continue to ravage Texas, I’m writing to say that we MUST restore funding to the agencies tasked with predicting, mitigating, and recovering from extreme weather disasters.
Trump’s cuts to the key weather and disaster response agencies have left critical forecast positions across the country vacant, undermining the early warning systems that save lives during natural disasters. Communities across the country are facing increasing disasters and need a coordinated federal response – but Trump still wants to continue gutting the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA’s) workforce, zero-out weather research funding, and is looking to phase out the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) entirely as he funds massive tax breaks for America’s wealthiest individuals and corporations.
The situation we’re in is unbelievably dangerous: 10 percent of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s workforce, around 1,300 staffers and researchers, are gone under Trump. Just last week, he called for reducing NOAA’s workforce by a further 17 percent – more than 2,000 staffers and researchers. He slashed 20 percent of FEMA’s full-time staff and moved to freeze its funds. His administration plans to phase out FEMA and completely zero-out NOAA’s weather research, weather laboratories, and tornado and severe storm research budget.
And what will happen because of these cuts? Well, we just found out in Texas, didn’t we? It’s completely heartbreaking ad it didn’t need to happen.
If we don’t want more innocent lives to be lost we must reverse these cuts now. Congress must use whatever levers of power they have at their disposal to get that done. Thanks.
First sent on July 7 by Jess Craven
