Among the stakes in the upcoming U.S. elections: Weather forecasts, who delivers them and what they say about links between extreme conditions and climate change.
Washington
Would Trump privatize weather forecasting? What to know.
Even as Donald Trump’s campaign has said it had no part in Project 2025, it’s widely seen as a blueprint for a possible second Trump administration. Private weather companies have not endorsed the calls for “commercializing” Weather Service data. Still, as the prospects of a second Trump presidency rise, meteorologists and climate scientists are voicing concern over what these proposals would mean for the millions of people they are working to inform and protect.
During Trump’s term, scientists said they were sidelined, muted or forced out by the hundreds and raised concerns that the administration misrepresented their research on the coronavirus and reproduction — as well as on hurricane forecasting, environmental advocates said.
“It does worry me what the future will hold” for staff at NOAA and the Weather Service, said JoAnn Becker, president of the National Weather Service Employees Organization. The union represents 4,000 workers at those agencies.
“There’s a lot of questions and no answers yet,” Becker said. “We just want to do our work protecting lives and property no matter who is president.”
Government agencies, including NOAA and the Environmental Protection Agency, have for months been preparing for the possibility that Trump will return to the White House by strengthening safeguards around scientific integrity and job security.
In a 2019 incident that became known as Sharpiegate, Trump used a marker to incorrectly suggest Hurricane Dorian could impact Alabama — a scandal that underscored the potential damaging impacts of political meddling. An investigation later found political influence led NOAA to release a statement improperly backing Trump, and ultimately undermining its own forecast. Some have looked to such clues from Trump’s four years in the White House to try to glean what may come in a second term.
Now, some scientists’ concerns stem from Project 2025, a 900-page document drafted by right-wing policy experts and former Trump officials. It calls for breaking up NOAA, whose climate research it calls “harmful to future U.S. prosperity.” It suggests the Weather Service should “fully commercialize its forecasting operations,” because its data is already used widely by private companies.
The report bases that proposal on an assertion that “forecasts and warnings provided by the private companies are more reliable than those provided by the NWS.” The report cites a consultant report that analyzed forecast accuracy and found the Weather Service ranked behind private-sector meteorologists, who use government-funded observations to inform predictions shared via TV and radio stations, weather websites and smartphone apps.
That includes outlets such as AccuWeather, the Weather Channel and Weather Underground — channels that help the Weather Service distribute its severe weather watches and warnings to a wider audience.
But it was not immediately clear what it might mean for the Weather Service to run more like a business. The agency tracks data on everything from land and sea temperatures, precipitation and atmospheric conditions.
A Project 2025 spokeswoman declined to make Thomas Gilman, who wrote the report’s recommendations for NOAA and the Weather Service, available for comment. Gilman served in the Trump administration as chief financial officer of the Commerce Department, which is the cabinet-level parent agency of NOAA and the Weather Service.
Weather Service spokeswoman Susan Buchanan said the agency does not comment on “speculation” over how a future administration could change its operations.
So far, some in the weather industry oppose the idea.
AccuWeather chief executive Steven R. Smith said NOAA’s “foundational data” helps inform AccuWeather’s own forecasting software, artificial intelligence and meteorologists, and that “it has never been our goal to take over the provision of all weather information.”
Smith said the company “does not agree with the view … that the National Weather Service should fully commercialize its operations.”
Whether Trump agrees is not clear.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said the former president “has nothing to do with Project 2025” and pointed to the Republican Party’s official platform. The platform makes no mention of weather or climate, and Cheung did not respond to further questions about the campaign’s position on NOAA or the Weather Service.
Some former Trump administration officials say they don’t share Project 2025’s visions for federal weather agencies, nor would they expect Trump to embrace them during a second term.
“There is 0% chance that anything in Project 2025 related to NOAA or weather will ever be considered or implemented,” Ryan Maue, a meteorologist who briefly served as NOAA’s chief scientist under Trump, wrote on X.
Stuart Levenbach, who served as NOAA chief of staff under Trump, said the administration made no efforts to privatize the Weather Service, though it did pursue increased funding for buying weather data generated by private-sector companies, including data on ocean surface winds, space weather and Earth’s atmosphere.
Under Trump, NOAA also worked to combat overfishing and other harms caused by Chinese fishing operations, speed up permitting processes that consider endangered species impacts and streamline the licensing processes for commercial satellites, Levenbach noted in a 2021 farewell letter to agency staff that he shared with The Washington Post.
Trump’s initial pick to lead NOAA was former AccuWeather CEO Barry Myers, though the Senate never confirmed his appointment and he withdrew it two years later.
While Myers never joined the agency, former NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service deputy director Andrew Rosenberg said the appointment suggests a more commercial approach to weather forecasting may have always been in the Trump playbook.
But Maue and Levenbach pointed to an alternate proposal floated by Republicans in Congress and supported by former NOAA officials who served during Republican administrations. They want to separate NOAA from the Commerce Department and develop it into an independent agency within the executive branch.
The idea was the subject of a House bill and hearing last year. Such independence could have prevented Sharpiegate, for example, Neil Jacobs, the acting NOAA administrator at the time, told a House committee last year.
The “disparate goals” of the Commerce Department and NOAA “have had a demonstrably adverse impact” on the scientific agency, Levenbach and retired Rear Adm. Tim Gallaudet, another top NOAA official under Trump, wrote in an opinion column in the Hill last year.
“An independent NOAA will ensure that America will better weather the storms in our future,” they wrote.
But others have expressed concern that — though NOAA could benefit from more resources and may not be a logical fit within Commerce — making the agency stand alone could remove layers of bureaucracy that ultimately insulate it from politics.
“You make NOAA separate, it’s a tiny little agency and [it becomes] subject to political whims both on the Hill and in any given administration,” Rosenberg said.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), “on behalf of the Department of Education (ED),” on Monday released a Notice Inviting Grant Applications for the Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) program. Applications are due by May 29.
Last November, ED announced that it had entered into an interagency agreement with HHS to administer the CCAMPIS program. This is the first CCAMPIS competition conducted under this arrangement.
Approximately $73.5 million will go to institutions of higher education that awarded at least $250,000 in Pell grants to enrolled students in FY 2025. HHS will award about 148 grants, ranging from $150,000 to $1 million.
The terms of the grant competition are not significantly different than prior competitions. As before, there are two absolute grant priorities that every application must address – leveraging non-federal resources and utilizing a sliding-fee scale for low-income parents.
This year’s competition includes only one invitational priority that reflects the Trump administration’s general educational policy. The new priority, entitled “Expanding Education Choice in Early Learning Settings,” encourages applications that “expand access to education choice … including by empowering parents in choosing the early learning setting that best meets their family’s needs.” Flexible childcare programs that include drop-in care and care during nontraditional hours are also encouraged.
One other notable difference from prior competitions is an expanded “Terms and Conditions” section that not only requires compliance with applicable civil rights laws, but also refers to Trump administration Executive Orders and guidance on racial discrimination that clarify “the application of federal antidiscrimination laws to programs or initiatives that may involve discriminatory practices, including those labeled as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (“DEI”) programs.” This includes any “discriminatory equity ideology [as defined in Executive Order 14190] in violation of a federal antidiscrimination law.”
The exact scope of these terms is unclear because courts have not found many of the practices described in these Executive Orders and guidance documents to be violations of federal law.
The Newsfeed
This week, the team brings you stories about how communities including Filipino immigrants, Sephardic Jews and Somalis arrived in the Pacific Northwest
Each week on The Newsfeed, host Paris Jackson and a team of veteran journalists dive deep into one topic and provide impactful reporting, interviews and community insights from sources you can trust. Each day this week, this post will be updated with a new story from the team.
Group hopes to boost recognition for Seattle’s Filipinotown
By Venice Buhain
The group Filipinotown Seattle hopes to make sure that the legacy of Filipino Americans in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District isn’t forgotten.
One of the group’s current projects is pushing for a Filipinotown placemarking sign in the CID.
“Filipino Americans have had a presence here for over 100 years in Seattle,” said Filipinotown Seattle Executive Director Devin Israel Cabanilla.
He said that the signage is important to remind people that “the International District is not just Chinatown. Japantown. Filipinotown is here as well.”
The group held a poll on what signage might look like and where it might be located. It would be similar to the Chinatown sign on South Jackson Street and Fifth Avenue South, or the Wing Luke Museum
In the early 20th century, the area now known as the CID was a hub full of businesses, entertainment, social groups and housing that served Seattle’s growing immigrant population from Asia and elsewhere. The communities all intermingled throughout the CID.
“This area was a central place for Asian Pacific immigrants simply because of segregation,” Cabanilla said.
Because the Philippines was a U.S. territory from 1898 to 1946, Filipino immigrants were unaffected by laws in the 1920s that restricted immigration from Japan or China. Many Filipinos came to study at the University of Washington or to work in burgeoning industries, like lumber, farming, canneries and factories.
While the physical Filipino presence in terms of buildings and storefronts in the CID dwindled in the later 20th century with redevelopment, Seattle Filipinos and Filipino Americans continued to make impacts locally, regionally and nationally.
“It may not have been in terms of storefronts, but our presence has always existed in terms of politics, culture as well,” Cabanilla said.
The Seattle Department of Transportation said it is aware that the group is working on its signage request, but the Department of Neighborhoods has not yet received a formal request. They are also working to develop a clearer process for this and other similar neighborhood signage proposals.
Filipinotown Seattle said it hopes that the sign helps remind Seattle of the CID’s unique designation as a neighborhood shaped by many immigrants and migrants to Seattle.
“Is it Chinatown? Is it Japantown? Is it Little Saigon? It’s all those things. And I think re cultivating that this is a multicultural district, Filipinotown is helping establish: Yes, it’s more than one thing,” Cabanilla said.
Venice Buhain is a multimedia journalist at Cascade PBS. She previously was the Cascade PBS’s associate news editor and education reporter. Venice has also worked for KING 5, The Seattle Globalist and TVW News.
Venice Buhain is a multimedia journalist at Cascade PBS. She previously was the Cascade PBS’s associate news editor and education reporter. Venice has also worked for KING 5, The Seattle Globalist and TVW News.
The state of Washington is getting a seventh temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The Marysville Washington Temple was announced Sunday night during a devotional in the Marysville Washington Stake by Elder Hugo E. Martinez, a General Authority Seventy in the church’s United States West Area Presidency.
“We are pleased to announce the construction of a temple in Marysville, Washington,” the First Presidency said in a statement. “The specific location and timing of the construction will be announced later. This is a reason for all of us to rejoice and express gratitude for such a significant blessing — one that will allow more frequent access to the ordinances, covenants and power that can only be found in the house of the Lord.”
The other temples in Washington are the Columbia River, Moses Lake, Seattle, Spokane, Tacoma and Vancouver temples.
The church has 214 temples in operation. Plans for another 170 temples have been announced; many of those temples are in various stages of planning and construction.
Sunday’s temple announcement follows the new practice of the church’s First Presidency, which determines where temples will be built — and when and how they will be announced.
The First Presidency directed a General Authority Seventy to announce the first temple in Maine at a fireside there in December.
In January, church President Dallin H. Oaks said the Maine announcement set the pattern for future temple announcements.
“The best place to announce a temple is in that temple district,” he told the Deseret News.
The First Presidency will continue to decide where future temples will be built. It then will “assign someone else to make the announcement in the place where the temple will be built,” he said.
This pattern came to him as a strong impression after he assumed leadership of the church in October, following the death of his friend, President Russell M. Nelson.
This came as a strong impression to him shortly after he assumed the leadership of the church, President Oaks said.
The church remains in the midst of an aggressive temple-building era. President Nelson announced 200 new temples from 2018 to 2025. All but one were announced at general conference.
Five dozen temples are now under construction.
President Oaks now has overseen the announcement of two temples, neither at a general conference.
At the October conference he said that “with the large number of temples now in the very earliest phases of planning and construction, it is appropriate that we slow down the announcement of new temples.”
Ten new temples are scheduled to be dedicated in the next six months.
- May 3: Davao Philippines Temple.
- May 3: Lindon Utah Temple.
- May 31: Bacolod Philippines Temple.
- June 7: Yorba Linda California Temple.
- June 7: Willamette Valley Oregon Temple.
- Aug. 16: Belo Horizonte Brazil Temple.
- Aug. 16: Cleveland Ohio Temple.
- Aug. 30: Phnom Penh Cambodia Temple.
- Oct. 11: Miraflores Guatemala City Guatemala Temple.
- Oct. 18: Managua Nicaragua Temple.
Two-thirds of the 170 temples still to be built are outside the United States.
Temples are distinct from the meetinghouses where Latter-day Saints worship Jesus Christ each Sunday. Temples are closed on Sundays, but they open during the week as sanctuaries where church members go to find peace, make covenants with God and perform proxy ordinances for deceased relatives.
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