Trump’s cuts to federal agency NOAA hurt Californians and weaken national security | Opinion
As a Sacramento native, the effects of climate change on the state are personal to me. My fondest memories are backpacking in the Sierras and Trinity Alps, places I’ve since returned to and found ravaged by wildfires.
As a student, I interned for former Senator Dianne Feinstein, who loomed large in California agricultural and water policy. My parents worked on California energy and environmental issues, and my mom owned N95 masks for wildfire smoke long before COVID made them common. Most recently, the devastating Los Angeles wildfires displaced friends and family.
My professional path led me to the intelligence community, where I served for a decade in Washington, D.C., and the Middle East. There, I saw how fires, floods and food aren’t just environmental topics but profound security issues.
Disrupted farms prompt food insecurity that overturns governments. Water insecurity helps terrorists recruit. Weather is fundamental to military operations. China’s lead in the clean technologies of tomorrow strengthens its geopolitical hand.
Failing to understand and address our climate reality endangers U.S. goals abroad and Californians at home. Unfortunately, recent cuts by the Trump Administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency do exactly that. Most recently, the federal administration fired nearly 1,000 employees at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, a possible first step in the Project 2025 objective to break up the agency.
NOAA’s premiere weather and climate forecasting is critical for both California and for U.S. national security. Its National Weather Service predicts and guides relief for disasters worldwide and in California, including the recent Los Angeles wildfires. The agency’s weather and climate data help the U.S. military operate around the world and help navigate sea level rise in places like San Diego, home of the Pacific Fleet.
NOAA expertise on oceans and coastlines supports fishing and prevents maritime accidents in Northern California while enabling U.S. diplomacy with allies in Asia who are threatened by sea level rise and Chinese overfishing. The science not only helps American leadership in global science diplomacy, it is also the source of billions of dollars in research funding to economies across the nation, including 11 California universities. And NOAA satellite data helps everyone from California farmers to fragile U.S. allies abroad navigate the impact of climate change on food production.
The attack on NOAA is worsened by other moves that make the country — and California — less secure. Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have gutted U.S. foreign assistance at USAID, undermining food and health security abroad while hurting California farms supplying humanitarian aid and eight California universities doing agricultural research. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is trying to force the armed forces to ignore our climate reality, undermining military effectiveness and hindering California’s military community, the largest in the country.
President Donald Trump is also undermining the Federal Emergency Management Agency and spreading misinformation around climate disasters for political gain (including in California) even as recent disasters have invited foreign propaganda and required U.S. military relief hundreds of times across red and blue states.
In the most recent five years recorded, weather and climate disasters killed a thousand more Americans, including 179 Californians, than the attacks of 9/11, which set me and many others on our paths to national service. The disasters caused $94 billion in damage, which is more than 14 times NOAA’s budget.
Keeping California and the United States safe requires standing up for smart policies to understand, mitigate and respond to climate disasters.
Every California Congressional representative should stand up to do so. Limited bipartisan consensus on wildfire relief and clean energy is a start, but it’s not enough. At the same time, California and other state governments must find their own ways to keep their residents safe, offsetting or navigating counterproductive federal action. Californians should accept nothing less.
This story was originally published March 26, 2025 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Trump’s cuts to federal agency NOAA hurt Californians and weaken national security | Opinion."