Staff members at a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have been told this week to stop all contact with foreign nationals, including on international treaties and seafood catch limits, stoking confusion and fear among government scientists as the Trump administration begins to shape its vision for their work.
The orders came from leaders of the National Marine Fisheries Service in all-staff meetings this week, according to multiple staff members, who spoke with The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the new administration. And the change has put some agency work - including efforts to set annual quotas on seafood harvests - on hold for the foreseeable future.
At other branches of NOAA, international contact is facing heavy scrutiny, staff members said, raising questions about how easily they could carry out everyday efforts to monitor weather and atmospheric conditions - such as working with other countries to track tsunami risks across the Pacific Ocean, key to ensuring safety along the West Coast. NOAA produces government weather forecasts, conducts long-term climate monitoring and research, and manages the nation’s fisheries and marine mammals.
“People have asked, ‘What if I have a postdoc (researcher) and they’re not a U.S. citizen?’” one fisheries employee said. “Nobody has an answer for those types of questions.”
The new instructions come as representatives of Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) Service have meanwhile taken over internal NOAA websites, employees said, removing pages devoted to diversity-focused employee affinity groups. DOGE officials have also begun gathering information on what research or grants might conflict with President Donald Trump’s executive order rooting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives out of government, they added.
[Trump policies sow chaos and confusion across the scientific community]
NOAA did not immediately respond to request for comment on the new policy.
Separately, NOAA on Wednesday canceled a National Academies study that was exploring how quotas and permits affect the fisheries industry, including whether there were barriers preventing new entrants from participating in the industry.
Some details about the new orders to NOAA staff were first reported by WIRED on Wednesday, including that the ban on foreign communication also applied to an agency branch that oversees satellite-collected environmental data.
The turmoil has created an atmosphere of fear and confusion across the agency of 13,000 employees. At all-hands meetings convened in NOAA offices across the country this week, staffers raised questions about whether the integrity of NOAA science is at risk.
There have been few clear answers.
Democrats in Congress have prepared to fight any actions to weaken or dismantle NOAA, which they said the president could not legally do without their input.
In an interview, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) said that given Musk’s action to dismantle agencies including the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Department of Education, fears that NOAA could be next are legitimate.
“We need to be on full alert,” he said.
In field offices across the country, some staff were “being left completely clueless,” said Andrew Rosenberg, a former NOAA official and a senior fellow at the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy. Across the agency, staff members have received emails with repeated requests for volunteers who want to resign from their posts - part of a sweeping effort to shrink the federal workforce. On Thursday, a federal judge paused the deadline for the administration’s buyout offer.
“What are they supposed to do? What are they not supposed to do?” Rosenberg said. For many, it was not clear, he said.
Fears stem from examples of scientists being sidelined or muted during Trump’s first term, and signs that the president is taking more brazen steps to derail their work in his second administration. That includes recent steps to shutter government offices devoted to the disproportionate harms of pollution on poor and minority communities and to scrutinize research of all kinds focused on minorities, women and LGBTQ+ people.
In perhaps the most notable incident touching on the integrity of weather and climate science during Trump’s first term, the president referred to an official National Hurricane Center forecast cone for Hurricane Dorian that had been doctored with a Sharpie marker. Trump on Monday nominated a key player from that episode to lead NOAA: Neil Jacobs, an atmospheric scientist who was serving as acting NOAA administrator at the time and was later found to have violated agency policies that guard against political interference in science.
Scientists, congressional staffers and former NOAA officials who spoke with The Post credited Jacobs for his strong support for improvements in weather and climate forecasting.
Some also pointed to assurances by commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick during his confirmation hearings that he would not dismantle NOAA, as had been suggested in Project 2025, the Republican playbook for a second Trump administration. NOAA sits within the Commerce Department in part because of the importance of weather forecasting to fisheries and other industries, but Republicans have proposed making it an independent agency.
California Reps. Jared Huffman and Zoe Lofgren, the ranking Democrats on the House’s natural resources and science committees, respectively, said in a joint statement that they feared DOGE was “wreaking havoc on the scientific and regulatory systems that protect American families’ safety and jobs.”
“Americans rely on NOAA’s services, day in and day out,” they said.
Democratic members of Maryland’s congressional delegation - including Van Hollen, Sen. Angela Alsobrooks and Rep. Jamie Raskin, whose district includes NOAA’s Silver Spring headquarters - requested that Lutnick meet with them to “reaffirm … unwavering support for this crucial agency.” The nomination of Lutnick, CEO of financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, got the approval of a Senate committee on Wednesday.
“America needs to understand precisely the Administration’s plans for NOAA’s future,” the Maryland lawmakers wrote in a letter Thursday.
After the administration took down many government websites devoted to LGBTQ+ health, gender and HIV care last week, concern heightened Wednesday that content focused on climate was next: A NOAA website hosting data on greenhouse gas monitoring had disappeared.
But staff confirmed to The Post that the brief disruption was related to “scheduled maintenance,” tied to work on electrical systems at a NOAA facility in Boulder, Colorado. That website was operating normally Thursday.