The fate of NOAA and FEMA depends on the election results

With the 2024 election just days away, the future of federal agencies responsible for weather forecasting, climate change research and disaster relief is at stake.

These agencies, namely the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), have become increasingly politicized in recent years, even though the agencies have historically remained above the fray. But as natural disasters fueled by climate change now hit the U.S. on a regular basis — there have already been 24 weather events this year, each causing at least $1 billion in damage — authorities have taken on a larger role. And that has made them a target for some conservatives who are skeptical about climate change and want to cut government budgets.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has promised deep cuts to the federal budget, and Elon Musk, one of his most vocal surrogates, said last week that he would cut at least $2 trillion from the budget if he served in a second Trump administration. Project 2025, a 922-page conservative policy roadmap compiled by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, recommends “breaking up and shrinking” NOAA and takes aim at FEMA, suggesting that much of the Financial burden is responsible for a disaster The recovery should be shifted to state and local governments.

This could dramatically change the way disaster relief looks in the United States.

“It becomes almost unthinkable that states would ever be able to recover without long, costly recovery periods funded by state and local budgets,” said Craig Fugate, who served as FEMA administrator under the Obama administration.

It's not entirely clear what a second Trump administration would mean for FEMA or NOAA. Trump has publicly distanced himself from Project 2025, even though many of its authors were advisers to him. Trump campaign officials told NBC News in emails that “Project 2025 has NOTHING to do with President Trump or his campaign” and that only the president “and no other organization or former staffer represents the second term policies.” . The campaign did not respond to follow-up questions about its plans for NOAA and FEMA.

FEMA has already become the target of scrutiny and criticism from some Republican leaders in the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton. Trump and several other prominent Republicans even went so far as to make false claims that FEMA funds were going to immigrants in the U.S. illegally. At the same time, widespread misinformation about the two storms meant that meteorologists became targets of threats despite the remarkable accuracy of their forecasts.

These forecasts may no longer be freely available to the public or state governments if the Project 2025 recommendations are implemented because NOAA oversees the National Weather Service.

In interviews, academic experts and current and former agency officials said that even an agenda based in part on the conservative roadmap could make the U.S. more vulnerable to extreme weather in a world where major disasters have already become more intense and frequent.

Currently, FEMA assistance covers at least 75% of the cost of major disasters, but Project 2025 proposals would reduce that share to just 25%.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., who served as Florida's emergency management director under Gov. Ron DeSantis from 2019 to 2021, said limiting relief aid could turn some communities into ghost towns. He pointed to Hurricane Michael, which hit Florida as a Category 5 storm in 2018.

“These areas would not have recovered had it not been for the federal government stepping in and paying for the response and recovery efforts,” Moskowitz said.

The hardest-hit areas that benefited most from federal aid, he added, “voted for Donald Trump, voted for Rick Scott, voted for Ron DeSantis.”

According to FEMA, the federal government has approved more than $1.2 billion in recovery assistance since Hurricanes Helene and Milton. That includes more than $185 million in aid for 116,000 households in North Carolina and more than $413 million for more than 125,000 households in Florida, where both storms made landfall.

Had Project 2025's proposals been implemented during Helene, Fugate said, they likely would have resulted in “more fatalities, a much slower response and very little financial support for communities' recovery.”

Project 2025 recommends that NOAA be “disbanded and many of its functions abolished, transferred to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.”

Matthew Sanders, acting deputy director of the Environmental Law Clinic at Stanford University, said that privatizing weather forecasting could lead to valuing companies' profits over providing a robust public service, which could reduce the quality of forecasts.

“A neutral, centralized government agency must play an important role that private companies cannot or will not play in this area,” Sanders said.

Matthew Burgess, an assistant professor at the University of Wyoming's College of Business, said privatizing weather forecasting could also lead to situations where state or local governments with more resources gain access to better quality forecasts, while those with fewer means are left behind remain dark. Or, he said, a region with a higher risk of hurricanes or tornadoes could be forced to pay more for those forecasts.

“Right now, Florida receives its hurricane forecasts for free from the federal government,” Burgess said. “If we privatize this, the private sector will probably operate more efficiently on average, but will that be offset by an incentive to lower prices? Because basically, if there's a hurricane coming, you really need that forecast, and you're going to pay whatever they charge.”

In a statement, the Heritage Foundation said: “Project 2025 does not call for the abolition of NOAA or the NWS. The claim is false and ridiculous.”

“There is a difference between privatization and commercialization,” the statement continued. “Using commercial products to provide taxpayers with better outcomes at lower costs is nothing new.”

Beyond its proposals for specific agencies, Project 2025 also calls for the dissolution of federal climate research. However, understanding the effects of climate change is an essential part of forecasting, especially for storms, as warmer oceans cause hurricanes to intensify more quickly and a warmer atmosphere enables them to dump more rain.

“That's why everyone gets up every day to come here and do their research so that people are better prepared … to make decisions that are critical to them and their families,” said DeNa Carlis, NOAA's director National Severe Storms Laboratory.

An end to climate research would make the US more vulnerable to its consequences, Fugate said.

“Just because you don’t like the answer doesn’t mean the information isn’t important,” he said. “How do we prepare if we ignore what’s coming?”

Given the growing lack of trust in government institutions, Sanders said major cuts to research or to weather and disaster agencies could further erode trust.

“Climate change is a very special problem in that, like most environmental problems, it does not respect our political boundaries and our state borders,” he said. “We need centralized federal agencies to respond to climate change, agencies that can handle large, significant disasters across multiple states at the appropriate scale.”