March 17, 2025 โ A pair of judges have ordered the U.S. government to rehire thousands of laid off workers, frustrating U.S. President Donald Trumpโs efforts to quickly and drastically shrink the federal workforce.
The Trump administration has prioritized slashing the federal workforce, first offering employees financial incentives to join a deferred resignation plan and then implementing mass layoffs of probationary employees. More than 20,000 employees have been laid off to date.
March 11, 2025 โ Late last month, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, mandated that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration get rid of 31 of its rental offices and facilities, including three in New England, The Publicโs Radio has learned.
Former NOAA scientists say they especially fear the ramifications of losing a building on the list in East Falmouth, Mass., which has long housed the entire Northeast Coastโs fisheries observer program and is tasked with tracking the number and habits of fish from Cape Hatteras, N.C., to the Gulf of Maine, and helping ensure fishers are not catching too many fish or illegal species.
Several workers from that program were already terminated in mass firings on Feb. 27, and scientists say losing the East Falmouth building would cause further disruptions, potentially resulting in massive declines in fish populations in the region and declines in enforcement of the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
March 11, 2025 โ Rebecca Howard is a marine biologist who spent six years in graduate school โ largely funded by federal scholarship dollars โ to earn a doctorate at Oregon State University. Last April, she was hired by the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administrationโs fisheries branch to join in annual surveys off Alaska that gather data vital to the management of the nationโs biggest seafood harvests.
This year, the Seattle-based Howard was scheduled to spend three weeks aboard a chartered fishing boat sampling Gulf of Alaska marine life, and another three weeks on a Bering Sea survey. But on Feb. 27, more than 10 months into a yearlong probation, she received an email from a NOAA vice admiral informing her that she was being terminated. Her ability, knowledge โand/or skillsโ no longer fit the agencyโs needs.
โThis is what I wanted to do. I wanted to stay at this job,โ Howard said in an interview from Seattle, where she worked at the main branch of the Alaska Fisheries Science Center. โIt was a huge disappointment.โ
March 6, 2025 โ The mass firing of probationary employees at federal agencies and other cuts by the Trump administration reached the epicenter of marine research for the Cape and Islands last week, leaving Vineyarders wondering about the potential ripple effects in the coming years.
Several scientists in Woods Hole were terminated Feb. 27, part of the Elon Musk-led layoffs by his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), according to former employees and other scientific leaders in the seaside community.
The firings, expected budget cuts and disbanding of diversity initiatives, both in Woods Hole and beyond, have cast a pall of fear and anger over the scientific community.
โThe body of knowledge and expertise that these agencies hold, and the staff within them, is immense, whether itโs their laboratory that we are able to access or their field expertise,โ said Emily Reddington, the executive director of the Great Pond Foundation here on the Island. โWe couldnโt do our work to help protect the ponds without them.โ
March 4, 2025 โ More federal workers were fired in Alaska Thursday, this time at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA.
Agency staff could not confirm how many people were fired from NOAA offices in the Juneau area.
Aaron Lambert, a fisheries management specialist, says he was one of at least four people who cleared out their desks at NOAAโs Alaska Regional Office in the Federal Building downtown.
Lambert says he saw it coming โ he was a โprobationary employeeโ who was with the agency for six months. But that didnโt buoy the โsinking feelingโ when he received the email at 11:35 a.m. Thursday officially firing him because his โability, knowledge and/or skills do not fit the agencyโs current needs,โ according to the email.
March 4, 2025 โ The head of squid research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrationโs (NOAA) Narragansett Bay facility is among the hundreds of agency employees nationwide who are no longer on the job, according to one of NOAAโs former administrators.
Former National Marine Fisheries Service Administrator Janet Coit said Monday that about 20 employees from NOAAโs Rhode Island office and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts were recently dismissed by Elon Muskโs Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Coit shared the revelation during a roundtable discussion hosted by U.S. Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-R.I.) at Save the Bayโs headquarters near the Port of Providence.
Coit, who directed the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM) from 2011 to 2021, called the firings โsudden, irrational and indiscriminate.โ
โThe circumstances are dire,โ she said. โThe impact will be felt in a cascading and ripple effect across many different coastal communities.โ
NOAA began firing employees on Feb. 27 as part of the latest wave of cuts from DOGE to shrink the federal workforce. NOAA employs some 12,000 people nationally โ 94 of whom work in Rhode Island, according to the latest figures available from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.
March 4, 2025 โ After several hundred employees were fired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) last week as part of DOGEโs workforce cuts, reporting has focused on how those cuts might threaten critical weather modeling and systems that help predict and warn the public about severe weather events such as hurricanes and tsunamis.
In response to a question asking for more details on the staff cuts, a NOAA spokesperson told Civil Eats that โper long-standing practice, we are not discussing internal personnel and management matters.โ But reports suggest staff cuts have happened across all six offices within NOAA, including the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS).
March 4, 2025 โ Sharp cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will hurt Rhode Islandโs economy and imperil its commercial fisheries, said U.S. Rep. Seth Magaziner.
The White House on Thursday cut around 800 people from the NOAA payroll, and intends to eliminate 30% to 50% of the agencyโs staff, said Magaziner, who hosted a panel discussion in Providence to โsound the alarm.โ
โAs the Ocean State, it is a direct attack on our character and our quality of life,โ Magaziner said. โAnd we need to fight back.โ
March 4, 2025 โ Multiple employees for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration working in the agencyโs Woods Hole and Narragansett Bay facilities had their positions eliminated by the agency on Thursday, according to 10 current and former employees of those labs and offices. The employees affected worked across the agency, including several in facilities and fisheries management.
The cuts affected people in their probationary periods of employment, which last one to two years at the agency. NOAA would not confirm the number of people whose jobs were cut at the two facilities, but several employees from Woods Hole said that branch provided the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, with a list of 23 names of probationary employees back in January. National news outlets like CBS and The New York Times have estimated the number of employees affected across the country is in the hundreds.
Sarah Cierpich was among the employees terminated from one of the campuses in Woods Hole after working for the agency for 19 years โ first as a contractor, and then, since September 9 of last year, as a federal employee. She said she had called out sick yesterday, fell asleep, and then woke up to the bad news.
โI woke up to my boss calling me, saying, โCan you check your email?โโ she said.
The termination email that came from Vice Admiral Nancy Hann, the new undersecretary of NOAA, made Cierpich feel โdisrespected and disgusted,โ she said.
February 13, 2025 โ Democrats in U.S. Congress are warning that rumored cuts to NOAA would endanger the agencyโs ability to adequately manage the nationโs commercial fisheries.
โLast week, the administrationโs Department of Government Efficiency entered NOAA facilities and accessed data and files,โ U.S. Representative Val Hoyle (D-Oregon) said during a 12 February U.S. House Natural Resources Committee markup meeting. โFurthermore, NOAA employees are reporting rumors of severe budget cuts that would gut essential programs and jobs that our fishermen and our communities rely on. Basic responsibilities such as providing grants to regional fishery management councils for their operations and routine fisheries stock assessments could be delayed or canceled.โ
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