Floridians keep an eye on the weather. It's vitally necessary in a state where temperatures can rise and fall 20-30 degrees in a matter of hours, lightning storms and downpours can burst into the middle of a sunny day, and ignoring weather reports might be fatal if a tornado is nearby. Right now eyes are on a developing tropical wave that could be heading our way.
The National Weather Service provides a wealth of detailed, comprehensive weather information and forecasts, all completely for free, used by researchers, weather apps and everyday people every day.
Project 2025, the conservative roadmap and wishlist from right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation, would like people to pay for it instead.
The document, touted as a presidential roadmap for the first 180 days of the next Republican president — although former President Donald Trump has recently been publically disavowing it, despite the many connections to his previous term — includes plans to convert up to 50,000 civil servants to political appointees chosen for loyalty, abolish theDepartment of Education and the Head Start program, dismantle theDepartment of Homeland Security, ban p*rnography (which is not defined), increase immigration enforcement and mass deport millions, reverse federal protections for abortion and limit mail-order abortion pills and contraception, end the Affordable Care Act and reduce Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, among many other hot button issues.
It also seeks to break up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) because the agency "has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity."
Here's what they suggest instead.
Project 2025: Break up NOAA
Project 2025's922-page book,titled "2025 Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise," effectively strips out of the federal government research programs into climate change, any efforts to mitigate its effects and any initiatives to move the country away from fossil fuels. NOAA, which provides much of the data that climate change estimations and predictions are based on, would be completely broken up (page 674).
"The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated." Thomas F. Gilman, a former Chrysler executive who became chief financial officer and assistant secretary for administration at the Department of Commerce in 2019 under Trump, wrote in the introduction to the chapter.
NOAA currently consists of six agencies:
- The National Weather Service (NWS)
- The National Ocean Service (NOS)
- The Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR)
- The National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS)
- The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)
- The Office of Marine and Aviation Operations and NOAA Corps
"This industry’s mission emphasis on prediction and management seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable," Gilman wrote. "That is not to say NOAA is useless, but its current organization corrupts its useful functions. It should be broken up and downsized."
The plan also makes a point of stating that "Scientific agencies like NOAA are vulnerable to obstructionism of an Administration’s aims if political appointees are not wholly in sync with Administration policy," suggesting that under this proposal scientific data must be changed to fit official policy, rather than the other way around.
"Particular attention must be paid to appointments in this area," Gilman said.
Make the NWS a commercial operation
The NWS is invaluable to daily life in Florida. NOAA’s satellites, aircraft, weather stations and meteorologists constantly collect weather data and expertly offer detailed weather forecasts and predictions to residents, researchers and nearly every third-party weather program, forecasting service or app. NWS weather alerts notify us of hurricanes, tornados and flooding. The NWS forecasts fire weather and issues watches, warnings and advisories for high winds, life-threatening rip currents and other hazards.
"The NWS should fully commercialize its forecasting operations," Gilman said, pointing out that many people use private companies such as AccuWeather for forecasts and warnings and find them more accurate. NWS data would no longer be publically viewable and Florida residents would have to find an app or weather service to watch for danger.
This could also prevent free and unfettered access to over a hundred years of weather data for scientists and researchers.
While AccuWeather has in the past lobbied for privatizing NWS weather data, the company's chief executive officer Steven R. Smith issued a release on July 10 saying, “AccuWeather does not agree with the view, and AccuWeather has not suggested, that the National Weather Service (NWS) should fully commercialize its operations. The authors of ‘Project 2025’used us as an example of forecasts and warnings provided by private sector companies without the knowledge or permission of AccuWeather.”
“AccuWeather is extremely proud of our track record of Superior Accuracy," Smith said, "but it has never been our goal to take over the provision of all weather information."
National Hurricane Center data would be under 'review'
Project 2025 does not recommend privatizing the National Hurricane Center.
"The National Hurricane Center and National Environmental Satellite Service data centers provide important public safety and business functions as well as academic functions, and are used by forecasting agencies and scientists internationally," Gilman said, stressing that data continuity is important.
But Gilman implies that the NWS has an agenda.
"Data collected by the department should be presented neutrally, without adjustments intended to support any one side in the climate debate," he said. It is unclear how that neutral presentation would differ from what exists now.
The chapter also calls for moving NOS survey functions to the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Geological Survey, streamlining the NMFS and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and narrowing their goals (with specific suggestions on which industry-limiting regulatory programs to cancel), breaking up the Office of Marine and Aviation Operations, which provides the ships and planes used by NOAA agencies, and downsizing most of the Oceanic and Atmospheric Research department which Gilman says is "the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism."
What is Project 2025?
Project 2025 is a multi-pronged Presidential Transition Project meant to assist a Republican president in the early days of his or her new presidency to consolidate power and dramatically overhaul the federal government. According to theProject 2025 website, the plan details a governing agenda to "rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left."
It consists of four pillars: a policy agenda, a LinkedIn-style personnel database for use in replacing tens of thousands of civil employees deemed not loyal enough, a Presidential Administration Academy and a playbook for the first 180 days of the next (Republican) administration. The policy agenda is the part that has gotten the most attention.
Project 2025 was created by right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation with help from over100 conservative groups. President Joe Biden and other Democrats have said the plan "will destroy America."
Although Trump has praised The Heritage Foundation and its plans in the past, and at least 31 of the project's 38 creators were connected with the Trump administration, and his running mate, JD Vance, wrote the forward for a new book called "Dawn's Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America" by Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation, and the foundation bragsthat during his first term, Trump embraced "nearly two-thirds of Heritage’s proposals within just one year in office," since attention has been brought on the more extreme positions of Project 2025 the former president has sought to distance himself, claiming to have no knowledge of it.
Trump's campaign has its own, much less detailed plan for policy and transition calledAgenda47. Some of the policies overlap with Project 2025 but Project 2025 is not an official plan from the Republican Party.
On Tuesday, Project 2025 director Paul Dans, formerly a top advisor in Trump's administration, stepped down following intense criticism and backlash and Trump's campaign managers stressed in a release that the project "should not be associated with the campaign or the President in any way.” However, Project 2025 still exists and a Heritage Foundation spokesman said work will continue on the project's plan to find loyal conservatives to fill federal roles, CNN reported.
