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The Trump administration is starting another round of job cuts this one more than 1,000 at the nation’s weather, ocean and fisheries agency, four people familiar with the matter tell The Associated Press. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Tuesday began plans to lay off 10% of its current workforce, people inside and outside the agency said, with some of them requesting anonymity due to fear of retribution. The numbers were presented to NOAA employees and managers were asked to submit names of positions for layoffs to agency headquarters, which will then go to NOAAs parent agency, the Department of Commerce, on Wednesday, the people said. Three former senior NOAA officials two former political appointees from the Biden administration who speak regularly with managers at their old agency used the same number for upcoming job cuts: 1,029, 10% of the current 10,290. They talked to multiple people still in NOAA and a current agency worker detailed the cuts that a manager explained to employees. While most people know about NOAA and its daily weather forecasts, the agency also monitors and warns about hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and tsunamis, manages the countrys fisheries, runs marine sanctuaries, provides navigation information to ships and observes changes in the climate and oceans. The agency also plays a role in warning about avalanches and space weather that could damage the electrical grid. It helps respond to disasters, including oil spills. The new cuts come after earlier rounds of Trump administration firings and encouraged retirements at NOAA, plus the elimination of nearly all new employees last month. After this upcoming round of cuts, NOAA will have eliminated about one out of four jobs since President Donald Trump took office in January. This is not government efficiency, said former NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad. It is the first steps toward eradication. There is no way to make these kinds of cuts without removing or strongly compromising mission capabilities. The cuts are being ordered without specific guidance from the Trump administration on how or where, which makes it even worse, Spinrad said. NOAA spokeswoman Monica Allen said the agency’s policy is not to discuss internal personnel matters, but said NOAA will continue to provide weather information, forecasts and warnings pursuant to our public safety mission. NOAA has already stopped releasing some weather balloons that gather crucial observations for forecasts in two locations Albany, New York, and Gray, Maine because of lack of staffing, the agency said last week. This is all happening as a severe storm system is forecast to move through the central and southern parts of the nation late this week in a multi-day outburst with strong tornadoes, hail and damaging winds expected. Weather forecasts will worsen and people are going to start seeing this very quickly, warned former NOAA chief scientist Craig McLean. It will also limit how much commercial fishermen will be able to catch, he said. On top of all the job losses, cuts in research grants to universities will also make it harder for the U.S. to keep improving its weather forecasts and better monitor what’s happening to the planet, McLean said. People are silently watching the United States decline as a technological leader, McLean said. America got to the moon, but our weather forecasts won’t be the greatest. The Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find APs standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. Seth Borenstein, AP science writer
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The Trump administration’s gutting of the U.S. Department of Education in the name of government efficiency is wreaking havoc on universities across America. Its latest move to cut over 1,300 employees for the agency, or half its workforce, is just the tip of the iceberg. Trump’s endgame is to dismantle the department altogether, which is something only Congress can do. But that doesn’t seem to be stopping him. Trump has attacked the department, calling it a big con job, and along with new Education Secretary Linda McMahon, has a two-pronged attack: loot the Department of Education’s $268 billion budget, by slashing budgets and firing staff, to free up money Trump desperately needs for his big tax cuts; and end wokeness in education (more about that below). Universities forced to freeze hiring and rescind offers As a result of the administration’s budget cuts and other attacks, many universities have instituted hiring freezes and reduced graduate programs, and are even rescinding admission offers to grad students. Universities depend on the Department of Education’s federal funding for financial aid, federal student loans, Pell Grants, and other research dollars. The cuts could chip away at American students’ already hampered ability to afford and attend college. In all, it’s a big chaotic mess. Harvard University, the University of Washington, and the University of Pittsburgh are the latest to announce hiring freezes, joining a number of other institutions including: North Carolina State University, Columbia University’s medical school, the University of Notre Dame, Emory University, Cornell University, Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, and the University of California, San Diego, per NPR. And universities including Northwestern, Emory, and the University of Pennsylvania have gone one step further, also instituting budget cuts, expenditure freezes, and capital spending reviews. But the hiring freeze at Harvard, which has the largest endowment in the world, is particularly worrisome, underscoring just how concerned even the most well-funded universities now are about their financial futures. Trump’s anti-woke political agenda for colleges Gutting the Education Department is also part of the political agenda Trump ran on for president. He wants to end what he has ranted against as left-wing indoctrination” and instead push his vision of education, which includes banning education on gender identity and structural racism, abolishing diversity and inclusion, and keeping transgender athletes out of girls sports. Or, in his own words, he wants to slash budgets at any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content.” Depsite Trump’s huffing and puffing, the department has no power over what’s taught in schools. “It is not the business of the federal government to be involved in curriculum or personnel hiring,” Kenneth Wong, a professor of education policy at Brown University told NPR. However, Trump is trying to use federal money as leverage over universities which he sees as hotbeds of dissent, critical of his agenda and other conservative ideas. The most recent example of how the Trump administration is trying to silence dissent is the recent unlawful arrest and detention of Columbia University student activist Mahmoud Khalil by ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A Palestinian student, he was the lead negotiators for pro-Palestine protesters who built a Gaza encampment on campus. Although Khalil has a green card, he was sent to a detention facility in Louisiana, without notice to his attorney or family. We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported, Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained, alleging Khalil was a Hamas supporter, which is lawyer said was “false and preposterous.”
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It might seem like every company is ditching their commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion at the moment, or at least strongly reconsidering them. Corporate leaders have said the threat of being targeted by a federal investigationper one of Trump’s executive orders on DEIis keeping them “up at night.” High-profile employers like Meta, Walmart, and McDonald’s have made notable changes to their DEI programs in recent months. As Fast Company has reported, however, not every company is taking this opportunity to entirely backtrack on DEI efforts. In fact, plenty of employers still seem confident that DEI is a worthwhile undertaking, according to the latest Compensation Best Practices Report from Payscale. How companies are thinking about DEI Of the nearly 3,600 companies surveyed, 38% said they are planning to make no changes to their diversity programs, while another 28% claimed to be increasing their commitments. Only 11% admitted they were pulling back on DEI (though another 22% said they did not have any such programs in place). Even as some organizations have scrubbed the term “equity” from their programs, the majority of companies66%believed equity should remain a “central pillar” of DEI efforts. Some experts have worried that political pressure and mounting anti-DEI sentiment might lead companies to make more expansive changes to their programs, even reevaluating pay equity efforts that have become prevalent in the business world. What we are worried about is people pausing on pay equity work,” Syndio chief legal officer Rob Porcarelli recently told Fast Company. “Some frame pay equity as a womens issue, and so it gets swept under the umbrella of DEI.” Pay equity trends in the workplace According to Payscale data, however, it’s not likely companies will let their pay equity initiatives fall by the wayside, even amid the shifting tides in corporate DEI. Corporate investment in pay equity has largely increased since 2019, when only 38% of companies engaged in this work; by 2022, the share of employers conducting or planning pay equity analyses had jumped to 66%. While interest has fallen slightly since then, the Payscale report found that the majority of companies57%remain committed to pay equity efforts in 2025. That said, there was variation in what companies analyzed as part of pay equity audits. In 2025, more than half are focused on the gender pay gap, though there was a meaningful drop in the share of companies analyzing pay on the basis of gender, from about 71% in 2024 to 57% this year. There was an even greater drop-off for pay equity analysis on the basis of race and ethnicity, from 64% to 45%. (Most employers72%also believed that research on the gender pay gap was “meaningful.”) An increase in pay transparency In the meantime, however, it seems companies are becoming more candid about pay and compensation, in part because of pay transparency laws that have forced their hand across a number of states. Nearly a third of employers said they were communicating more about their compensation practices, and 56% said they are publishing pay ranges regardless of whether it is mandated by state law (though this figure has dropped from 60% in 2024). Far more companies are also fielding direct inquiries from their workforce, with a third of them reporting that employees were asking questions about payan indication that workers are also taking matters into their own hands, no matter their company’s stance on pay transparency.
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