Less than a month into the second term of Donald Trump, the president signed an executive order that gave the non-governmental Department of Government Efficiency broad powers to gut the federal workforce, in the name of cost-cutting.
DOGE—led by the multibillionaire “special government employee” Elon Musk—has proceeded with zeal, working to scrap funding for veterans’ cancer treatments, reportedly cutting FDA employees directly working on Musk’s company Neuralink, slashing (and then walking back) layoffs in the National Nuclear Security Administration, cutting about 1,000 staff working for the National Park Service across the country, and this month, after a faltering start, beginning layoffs at NASA, the nation’s space agency.
During the final week of February, hundreds of federal workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were fired—about 10% of the agency workforce. One of the affected employees was Andrew Hazelton, a meteorologist who grew up in Florida and until last month spent his days with the Hurricane Research Division Modeling Team, which helps NOAA understand these extreme storms and mitigate the worst of their impacts. Hazelton is now on administrative leave—he’s not allowed to work—a temporary reinstatement position that could keep him (and many other NOAA staffers) in limbo as their situation works through the federal court system.
Gizmodo spoke with Hazelton by phone this week to discuss the position that he and hundreds of other federal employees at NOAA are dealing with as the DOGE cuts roll through the federal workforce. Below is our conversation, lightly edited for clarity.
Isaac Schultz, Gizmodo: I understand things have changed in the last day with a memo temporarily reinstating staff in “paid, non-duty” status, which potentially adds a new dimension to our conversation. Walk me through the timeline here, from your work at NOAA to the layoffs and basically how far along this rollercoaster we are now.
Andrew Hazelton: I’ve been with NOAA in varying capacities for over 8 years. After I got my PhD in 2016, I worked with a postdoc at Princeton University for the NOAA lab up there, NOAA GFDL in Princeton for 2 years, and then I went to AOML, the Hurricane Research Division, in 2018, working for the University of Miami. Last October I started the federal position, working for NOAA’s Environmental Modeling Center doing hurricane models and model development.
As of yesterday we are—on paper at least—reinstated with admin leave, because of the court decision over the weekend. What that looks like exactly, though, there’s still a lot of questions that we’ll have to get answers about. It seems as though— based on the wording of what they sent us—that they’re waiting for another court to say that they can go through with backpay. And right now we’re not allowed to work.
I was a new federal employee even though I’ve worked with NOAA for 8 years or more, and then February 27th we all got that mass email basically just informing us that we were being fired. It was sort of chaotic because they had about an hour’s notice. We’ve been in this limbo state. I know some people filed appeals with the merit board. There was this preliminary injunction that allows us to be reinstated, but it seems like it’s going to depend on appeals of that. And there’s still some uncertainty as to whether there could be a legal layoff process after that.
Gizmodo: It seems like across a number of agencies, folks are not only being hit with these layoffs, but then being stuck in these situations where it’s very unclear exactly what their status is, and what the federal government’s next move is going to be.
Hazelton: Right. It’s depending on court outcomes, and even across departments it seems like certain ones are responding to the rulings differently—some more enthusiastically than others. There are a lot of unknowns.
Gizmodo: We could speak about some more unknowns, frankly. Your focus is hurricanes. How many folks who work specifically on the hurricanes have been impacted, at least for the time being, and what this might mean for the public—people who need information about incoming storms?
Hazelton: In my group, I was the main person doing hurricanes. There were other people doing other kinds of modeling: severe weather and ocean models, all sorts of things. There were other people in NOAA that were part of the hurricane hunters, the ones that fly into the hurricanes, and I did that as part of my last role. There were a few people from that group that were laid off. A couple dozen may have gotten reinstated as part of the judge’s decision, but there wasn’t much communication about what criteria were used for that, but some were not fully reinstated. They’ve not given a lot of information about criteria or plans, but the big thing is that, if people aren’t fully reinstated, it’s going to be hard.
These are people working on some of the computer models that are our main tools collecting data. I know people in the satellite division have been affected, and satellites are one of our big tools for monitoring all sorts of weather, not just hurricanes. Effects could be felt across the board, for anybody who relies on weather data.
Gizmodo: Just because our readers are very familiar with hurricanes—many are in the American Southeast—can you name a couple of the storms that you flew through?
Hazelton: Because I was there through last year, it was the first part of the hurricane season. I was in Helene last year, and then I’ve also flown in storms like Michael in 2018, Dorian in 2019, Ian, which most of the Gulf people remember, Idalia. I’ve flown in quite a few big ones and done work with the aircraft data and also the modeling.
Gizmodo: What is it like to fly through a hurricane, and what storm was the most unnerving to go through?
Hazelton: Most of the flight is just kind of like a bumpy commercial flight. It’s a P-3 aircraft. It’s a propeller plane—kind of a bumpy, noisy plane in general—but very sturdy. But when you get in the eyewall—that ring near the center that’s the most intense part of the hurricane—that’s where you can see some real bumps.
I think Michael was probably the storm that was the bumpiest. I wasn’t on the famous Ian flight where they got really rocked around—I was the one before that. So Michael and also Helene last year was a pretty intense eyewall. We didn’t want to fly through because it was just so gnarly looking on radar.
Gizmodo: People in and affiliated with this administration talk a lot about privatizing weather forecasting. What are your opinions on that, and what might that outlook mean for federal workers and for the way the public gets their weather information, depending on how successful you imagine that that effort being, should they proceed with it?
Hazelton: The thing is there’s already a pretty robust private weather enterprise. There are private companies that do good work. We work with them and a lot of them rely on NOAA data for their apps or different tools. It’s really a pretty good public-private partnership that I think is honestly a model for that kind of thing. I don’t think we want to get to a point where there’s like a subscription-based model for warnings or any sort of life-saving data or information. Honestly, open access to data for the cost of your tax dollars is one of the things that’s really been a model of NOAA. If you look at the numbers, it only costs 6 cents per American per day to fund all of NOAA at its current level.
It’s a pretty minuscule cost when you look at like the dollars saved. Whenever there’s a hurricane, better forecasts allow people to get out—or vice versa, if they’re not going to be impacted, they don’t have to close up their school or business. Better forecasts save lives and money. In a lot of ways, NOAA really pays for itself.
Gizmodo: You mentioned that some folks were reinstated early on. It sounds like it’s kind of a black box as to how those decisions are being made. Is that a fair characterization?
Hazelton: Yeah, there hasn’t really been a whole lot of criteria or communication. I think there was supposed to be some veterans’ preference for prior federal service, but it really hasn’t been made clear at all to us how these decisions are being made.
Gizmodo: In that case, a silly question that I’ll ask anyway: Is there any idea of how long this ambiguity will last?
Hazelton: No, not really. I think it’s going to depend a lot on court cases and how those play out. That’s above my pay grade. I’m just ready to get back to work doing what I love doing and what helps protect the American public.
Gizmodo: Given the abruptness of these layoffs and your hands being tied with work, it sounds like you just have some stuff sitting on your desk waiting to be resumed, which with something as dynamic as weather, is probably not the best thing.
Hazelton: It’s tough. My coworkers, the ones that are still there, they’re great and they’re working hard, but it’s just hard when you have an agency that’s already understaffed and just being stretched even thinner. It’s hard to get everything done that you want and need to.
Gizmodo: Is there anything you really want to get across about either your personal experience right now or the experience of federal workers more generally at this time?
Hazelton: Most of us just want to get back to the work we’re doing to help the American public. NOAA’s mission is to protect lives and property. We have a track record of doing that and that’s what we want to get back to doing.
