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I am not an alarmist. But we live in alarming times. The rampant racism and misogyny. The anti-immigrant fervor. A thousand cuts into the fabric of democracy since Donald Trump became president in 2016. And strangest, most frustratingly of all, nothing seems to break through to the American people writ large. Decent people, church going people, people who love their dogs and kids and would give a neighbor the shirt off their back, have fallen in line behind a deceitful, hateful vision of American white nationalism.
DOGE and Project 2025. Trump’s American nightmare took hold with a vise-like grip, a force that could be constrained around the edges by the courts but not controlled. Cuts in government services and employees, all in the name of efficiency, but not its substance. And as those of us paying attention have known all along, it was never about finding waste and fraud, because there wasn’t much, if any, of that. It has been, of course, about the grift, about corruption, about self-enrichment. The full contours of the long-term plans aren’t clear yet, but there are suggestions it is about accessing personal data so people can be pinpoint targeted by disinformation campaigns in future elections and plenty of grounds to suspect that this is about expanding Trump and Elon Musk’s personal portfolios.
The implications of Trump’s cuts to government services came into focus Friday, as a line of storms moved across the East Coast. Americans rely without bothering to think much about it on the accuracy of weather prediction services that warn us about when we need to take care. In California, where I grew up, that’s not as much of an issue—no one is accurately predicting earthquakes. But in Alabama, where I have spent the last 35 years, and other parts of, well, Trump Country, deadly tornadoes and hurricanes make it a necessity. Without forecasting, there would be too few visual cues before it was too late.
Here in the Southeast, we are prone to increasingly frequent and deadly tornadoes, and hurricanes as you get down to the coast. There are no innate warning systems. We rely on the government, the federal government, so people can be prepared and seek shelter. Trusted local weathermen get their data from NOAA and other federal sources, and when disaster strikes, states and localities—and people, taxpayers—rely on FEMA for first response and to help them get back on their feet.
The New York Times reported yesterday that a weather service office in Kentucky scrambled to cover overnight forecasting as storms bore down on the region. They no longer have 24-hour staffing. Among the concerns they included in their story:
The National Weather Service has lost close to 600 employees since the start of the Trump administration, as a result of layoffs and early retirements because the administration demanded “significant cuts”.
Because of the staffing cuts, some of the 122 weather forecasting offices that operate 24 hours a day, nationwide, each with responsibility for their area, have cut back on the twice-daily launches of weather balloons that collect data and make daily forecasts and forecast models possible.
An agreement last month between the National Weather Service and its employees’ union warned of “degraded” services.
Five former directors recently wrote an open letter saying they “feared the cuts had been so deep that lives would soon be endangered.”
The Washington Post put up a map of parts of the country that no longer have 24-hour weather prediction services. In addition to the Kentucky office, there is one in Kansas. None of this makes any sense. I worked in government long enough to be a big fan of cutting waste. But providing lifesaving weather prediction services is about as far from waste as I can imagine. Why derail them? (Unless, of course, you’re planning on creating a private company to provide those services for a fee, but I try not to deal in speculation here.)
Friday night into Saturday, as severe weather, possibly including tornadoes, crossed through Missouri and Kentucky, 21 people were killed.
Too many people only seem to pay attention to the way Trump is “transforming” government when they are personally impacted. Too many people don’t miss much-maligned government services until they are absent in a time of need.
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As students prepared for final exams in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on April 27, 2011, a violent EF4 multi-vortex tornado descended on the area. Other storms continued into the evening and beyond Tuscaloosa, devastating other parts of the region. Sixty-four people were killed and another 1,500 people suffered injuries. The first time I drove into Tuscaloosa after the storms, I had to pull over on the side of the road to take in the decimation and collect myself.
Without the National Weather Service, it would have been so much worse. Without FEMA and other resources—the U.S. Marshals service, for instance, stepped in to help one small town—recovery and first response would have been still more traumatic.
As the storms formed in Alabama that day, the National Weather Service sent out severe weather warnings, and people in the area were able to prepare and take cover. That happened because of the scientific network that takes in data, analyzes it, and provides a product to the public. That’s the federal government at work. That’s the fat Trump and Musk decided should be cut. And hurricane season is just about to start.
We need and rely on the federal government in moments like this. It’s one thing for billionaires to make light of it. To the rest of us, it is something else entirely. And it is our taxpayer dollars, which the Constitution says are to be allocated by Congress, but the president now believes are his to dictate.
Wake up, folks. The tornado is on your doorstep, and this time you’re not going to get a warning.
We’re in this together,
Joyce
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