February 8, 2025
Muhannad Ayyash
Under orders from President Donald Trump, unelected tech billionaire Elon Musk and his rogue unit, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), have taken a political sledgehammer to federal agencies as part of a top-down personnel and cost-cutting shakeup that has been derided by Democrats and legal experts as unconstitutional.
Muhannad Ayyash
Under orders from President Donald Trump, unelected tech billionaire Elon Musk and his rogue unit, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), have taken a political sledgehammer to federal agencies as part of a top-down personnel and cost-cutting shakeup that has been derided by Democrats and legal experts as unconstitutional.
Employees across the federal government have faced intimidation and threats of layoffs as part of Trump and Musk’s effort to cut spending without congressional approval and replace career civil servants with loyalists. Trump and DOGE face legal challenges, but observers fear the damage will be done by the time courts step in, including to critical research and services the public relies on to stay safe as the climate crisis intensifies.
When DOGE barged into the offices of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric A (NOAA) this week, the scrutiny from Musk’s unelected and unaccountable team added to fears that the collection of agencies the nation relies on to manage fisheries, track climate change, forecast hurricanes and issue severe weather warnings will be gutted and privatized under Trump. Musk reportedly staffed DOGE with young, inexperienced engineers from Silicon Valley.
“They apparently just sort of walked past security and said: ‘Get out of my way,’ and they’re looking for access for the IT systems, as they have in other agencies,” said Andrew Rosenberg, a former NOAA fisheries official who was quoted in The Guardian on Tuesday.
More than over 100 civil society groups are demanding that Congress investigate DOGE, but leaders of the Republican majority have downplayed or defended Musk’s efforts. On Wednesday, Democratic Representatives Jared Huffman and Zoe Lofgren of California said “DOGE hackers” have unlawfully gained access to private personal information and are gutting critical programs at federal agencies.
“Now they have reached NOAA where they’re wreaking havoc on the scientific and regulatory systems that protect American families’ safety and jobs,” Huffman and Lofgren said in a statement.
NOAA includes the National Hurricane Center and National Weather Service (NWS), which provide forecasts and data to researchers and the public as well as private companies that are eager to control weather data and sell it for a profit. As a global leader in climate science, NOAA is also under pressure from far right climate deniers who accuse the agency of promoting a political agenda by making its constantly updated data on climate change available for free.
With labs that measure global temperatures, melting Arctic ice, and levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, NOAA provides indisputable evidence that the climate crisis is real, which flies in the face of Trump’s pro-fossil fuel agenda. Timothy Whitehouse, director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), which protects civil servants, especially whistleblowers, working on environmental issues, said NOAA’s labs are at risk of being defunded and transformed into a commercial venture that sells data to private industry, rather than a public service meant to warn everyone about heat waves and intensifying storms.
“What I call the Musk-Trump confederacy to destroy government functions and privatize what’s left of the valuable parts of these agencies is absolutely frightening, and we cannot allow these very large powerful corporations to control public data and to monetize it for their own benefit,” Whitehouse said in an interview.
Sources within the agency told Axios on Wednesday that a member of DOGE combed through NOAA databases searching for information on resource groups for LGBT employees and women as part of Trump’s crackdown on diversity initiatives. While DOGE initially appeared to focus on personnel rather than the agency’s climate data, Whitehouse spoke to career officials who said internal anxiety about the future of NOAA and its scientific mission remains high.
Looming over DOGE’s scrutiny of NOAA is Project 2025, the policy blueprint for the Trump regime prepared by the Heritage Foundation and other far right groups.
Project 2025 calls NOAA a “main driver of the climate change alarm industry” and therefore a “harmful to future U.S. prosperity,” a claim clearly rooted in anti-science denialism. “This industry’s mission emphasis on prediction and management seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable,” it goes on to say. “That is not to say NOAA is useless, but its current organization corrupts its useful functions.” The blueprint calls for NOAA and its six main offices to be broken up and downsized, and for the forecasts of the NWS to be “fully commercialized” in order to serve private interests.
Trump disavowed Project 2025 on the campaign trail, but his administration’s attacks on federal agencies closely mirror the playbook. Russell Vought, Trump’s newly confirmed pick to run the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), is one of Project 2025’s authors.
Along with Rosenberg, the former NOAA official, Whitehouse said private companies have long wanted to prevent NOAA from releasing data to the public so they can package it up and sell it as part of online weather forecasting products, for example. Meanwhile, meteorologists serving local communities face layoffs as the TV broadcasting industry consolidates, potentially leaving people in underserved areas with fewer options for accessing information on severe weather and other risks, all as the fallout from climate crisis rapidly accelerates.
“Much of the world including private services rely on NOAA data, and if that’s privatized, you will have Musk-type control over data that the entire world depends upon,” Whitehouse said in an interview. “Do you really want oligarch billionaires controlling data that will determine how governments, communities and businesses respond to emerging threats that determine long-term trends in the health of our planet?”
Howard Lutnick, Trump’s nominee to head the U.S. Department of Commerce, under which NOAA falls, said he opposes the Project 2025 proposal to dismantle NOAA during a confirmation hearing last week.
Trump’s nominee to run NOAA, Neil Jacobs, served as acting administrator during Trump’s first term and is best known for defending Trump during the embarrassing “Sharpiegate” scandal in 2019, when the president insisted on highlighting a bizarre and grossly incorrect forecast of Hurricane Dorian’s path toward the U.S. coastline altered with a black marker.
Jacobs is also a fellow at the American Meteorological Society and a respected researcher in his field. Whitehouse said the real question is whether Jacobs will be allowed to act independently from Trump and Musk.
“To the extent that he can assert political power within the agency and within the Trump administration remains to be seen, and it remains to be seen what his beliefs are on the issue of privatizing the weather service,” Whitehouse said.
Whitehouse said OMB and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) are effectively running NOAA and other federal agencies at this point, leaving career employees and even Trump’s political appointees virtually powerless during Musk’s purge.
“Normally there’s a transition period with transition teams working with political appointees and articulating priorities for federal agencies, but that’s not what happening here,” Whitehouse said. “OPM and OMB are blowing up these agencies intentionally.”
When DOGE barged into the offices of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric A (NOAA) this week, the scrutiny from Musk’s unelected and unaccountable team added to fears that the collection of agencies the nation relies on to manage fisheries, track climate change, forecast hurricanes and issue severe weather warnings will be gutted and privatized under Trump. Musk reportedly staffed DOGE with young, inexperienced engineers from Silicon Valley.
“They apparently just sort of walked past security and said: ‘Get out of my way,’ and they’re looking for access for the IT systems, as they have in other agencies,” said Andrew Rosenberg, a former NOAA fisheries official who was quoted in The Guardian on Tuesday.
More than over 100 civil society groups are demanding that Congress investigate DOGE, but leaders of the Republican majority have downplayed or defended Musk’s efforts. On Wednesday, Democratic Representatives Jared Huffman and Zoe Lofgren of California said “DOGE hackers” have unlawfully gained access to private personal information and are gutting critical programs at federal agencies.
“Now they have reached NOAA where they’re wreaking havoc on the scientific and regulatory systems that protect American families’ safety and jobs,” Huffman and Lofgren said in a statement.
NOAA includes the National Hurricane Center and National Weather Service (NWS), which provide forecasts and data to researchers and the public as well as private companies that are eager to control weather data and sell it for a profit. As a global leader in climate science, NOAA is also under pressure from far right climate deniers who accuse the agency of promoting a political agenda by making its constantly updated data on climate change available for free.
With labs that measure global temperatures, melting Arctic ice, and levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, NOAA provides indisputable evidence that the climate crisis is real, which flies in the face of Trump’s pro-fossil fuel agenda. Timothy Whitehouse, director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), which protects civil servants, especially whistleblowers, working on environmental issues, said NOAA’s labs are at risk of being defunded and transformed into a commercial venture that sells data to private industry, rather than a public service meant to warn everyone about heat waves and intensifying storms.
“What I call the Musk-Trump confederacy to destroy government functions and privatize what’s left of the valuable parts of these agencies is absolutely frightening, and we cannot allow these very large powerful corporations to control public data and to monetize it for their own benefit,” Whitehouse said in an interview.
Sources within the agency told Axios on Wednesday that a member of DOGE combed through NOAA databases searching for information on resource groups for LGBT employees and women as part of Trump’s crackdown on diversity initiatives. While DOGE initially appeared to focus on personnel rather than the agency’s climate data, Whitehouse spoke to career officials who said internal anxiety about the future of NOAA and its scientific mission remains high.
Looming over DOGE’s scrutiny of NOAA is Project 2025, the policy blueprint for the Trump regime prepared by the Heritage Foundation and other far right groups.
Project 2025 calls NOAA a “main driver of the climate change alarm industry” and therefore a “harmful to future U.S. prosperity,” a claim clearly rooted in anti-science denialism. “This industry’s mission emphasis on prediction and management seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable,” it goes on to say. “That is not to say NOAA is useless, but its current organization corrupts its useful functions.” The blueprint calls for NOAA and its six main offices to be broken up and downsized, and for the forecasts of the NWS to be “fully commercialized” in order to serve private interests.
Trump disavowed Project 2025 on the campaign trail, but his administration’s attacks on federal agencies closely mirror the playbook. Russell Vought, Trump’s newly confirmed pick to run the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), is one of Project 2025’s authors.
Along with Rosenberg, the former NOAA official, Whitehouse said private companies have long wanted to prevent NOAA from releasing data to the public so they can package it up and sell it as part of online weather forecasting products, for example. Meanwhile, meteorologists serving local communities face layoffs as the TV broadcasting industry consolidates, potentially leaving people in underserved areas with fewer options for accessing information on severe weather and other risks, all as the fallout from climate crisis rapidly accelerates.
“Much of the world including private services rely on NOAA data, and if that’s privatized, you will have Musk-type control over data that the entire world depends upon,” Whitehouse said in an interview. “Do you really want oligarch billionaires controlling data that will determine how governments, communities and businesses respond to emerging threats that determine long-term trends in the health of our planet?”
Howard Lutnick, Trump’s nominee to head the U.S. Department of Commerce, under which NOAA falls, said he opposes the Project 2025 proposal to dismantle NOAA during a confirmation hearing last week.
Trump’s nominee to run NOAA, Neil Jacobs, served as acting administrator during Trump’s first term and is best known for defending Trump during the embarrassing “Sharpiegate” scandal in 2019, when the president insisted on highlighting a bizarre and grossly incorrect forecast of Hurricane Dorian’s path toward the U.S. coastline altered with a black marker.
Jacobs is also a fellow at the American Meteorological Society and a respected researcher in his field. Whitehouse said the real question is whether Jacobs will be allowed to act independently from Trump and Musk.
“To the extent that he can assert political power within the agency and within the Trump administration remains to be seen, and it remains to be seen what his beliefs are on the issue of privatizing the weather service,” Whitehouse said.
Whitehouse said OMB and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) are effectively running NOAA and other federal agencies at this point, leaving career employees and even Trump’s political appointees virtually powerless during Musk’s purge.
“Normally there’s a transition period with transition teams working with political appointees and articulating priorities for federal agencies, but that’s not what happening here,” Whitehouse said. “OPM and OMB are blowing up these agencies intentionally.”
February 8, 2025
Israeli authorities released 183 Palestinian prisoners on 8 February, while Hamas released three Israeli captives from Gaza. The exchange completed the fifth round of prisoner releases as part of the Gaza ceasefire agreement reached last month between Hamas and Israel.
WAFA news agency reports that the released Palestinian prisoners include 18 individuals serving life sentences, 54 others with long-term sentences, and 111 detainees from Gaza detained after the start of the war on 7 October 2023.
The Palestinian Prisoner's Society reported that 42 of the prisoners released are from the occupied West Bank, three are from occupied Jerusalem, and 27 are from Gaza.
Additionally, seven prisoners serving life sentences were deported outside of Palestine, including Ahmed Atiyah Jaafari, Abdel Azim Hassan, Imad Abu Ajamiya, Falah Shehada, Montaser Abu Ghalion, Mansour Abu Aoun, and Youssef Iskafi.
As Palestinian prisoners were released from Ofer Prison near Ramallah, Israeli forces blocked families from gathering to welcome their loved ones and fired live ammunition and tear gas at them.
Hundreds of Palestinians and relatives of the released prisoners gathered early in the morning at the Mahmoud Darwish Museum in Ramallah to greet the freed detainees, waving Palestinian flags in celebration of their release, WAFA added.
Al-Jazeera reports that seven released Palestinians were immediately transferred to the hospital for immediate treatment, as others described horrific conditions in Israeli jails.
Palestinian prisoners are often tortured and raped in Israeli prisons and detention centers.
Hamas released three captives abducted by resistance fighters during the 7 October attack on Israeli settlements and military bases enforcing the siege on Gaza.
The captives were taken from Kibbutz Be’eri and the Nova music festival. Israel deployed attack helicopters, drones, and tanks to the kibbutzim (settlements) and Nova festival, killing hundreds of Palestinian resistance fighters as well as Israeli civilians and soldiers, per the Hannibal Directive.
The released Israeli captives include Eli Sharabi, 52, Or Levy, 34, and Ohad Ben Ami, 56.
Hamas set up a stage for the handover to the Red Cross in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. The stage was decorated with a sign declaring “total victory,” the slogan used by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu throughout the war, the Times of Israel wrote.
Deir al-Balah is one of the few areas in the Strip where the Israeli army had not intensively operated with ground forces. Unlike other areas of Gaza, most of the buildings in Deir al-Balah are standing, the Times of Israel noted.
The Red Cross transferred the freed captives to members of the Israeli Army and Shin Bet inside Gaza, after which they were escorted out of the Strip to a military facility near the border to reunite with family members.
Israeli authorities released 183 Palestinian prisoners on 8 February, while Hamas released three Israeli captives from Gaza. The exchange completed the fifth round of prisoner releases as part of the Gaza ceasefire agreement reached last month between Hamas and Israel.
WAFA news agency reports that the released Palestinian prisoners include 18 individuals serving life sentences, 54 others with long-term sentences, and 111 detainees from Gaza detained after the start of the war on 7 October 2023.
The Palestinian Prisoner's Society reported that 42 of the prisoners released are from the occupied West Bank, three are from occupied Jerusalem, and 27 are from Gaza.
Additionally, seven prisoners serving life sentences were deported outside of Palestine, including Ahmed Atiyah Jaafari, Abdel Azim Hassan, Imad Abu Ajamiya, Falah Shehada, Montaser Abu Ghalion, Mansour Abu Aoun, and Youssef Iskafi.
As Palestinian prisoners were released from Ofer Prison near Ramallah, Israeli forces blocked families from gathering to welcome their loved ones and fired live ammunition and tear gas at them.
Hundreds of Palestinians and relatives of the released prisoners gathered early in the morning at the Mahmoud Darwish Museum in Ramallah to greet the freed detainees, waving Palestinian flags in celebration of their release, WAFA added.
Al-Jazeera reports that seven released Palestinians were immediately transferred to the hospital for immediate treatment, as others described horrific conditions in Israeli jails.
Palestinian prisoners are often tortured and raped in Israeli prisons and detention centers.
Hamas released three captives abducted by resistance fighters during the 7 October attack on Israeli settlements and military bases enforcing the siege on Gaza.
The captives were taken from Kibbutz Be’eri and the Nova music festival. Israel deployed attack helicopters, drones, and tanks to the kibbutzim (settlements) and Nova festival, killing hundreds of Palestinian resistance fighters as well as Israeli civilians and soldiers, per the Hannibal Directive.
The released Israeli captives include Eli Sharabi, 52, Or Levy, 34, and Ohad Ben Ami, 56.
Hamas set up a stage for the handover to the Red Cross in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. The stage was decorated with a sign declaring “total victory,” the slogan used by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu throughout the war, the Times of Israel wrote.
Deir al-Balah is one of the few areas in the Strip where the Israeli army had not intensively operated with ground forces. Unlike other areas of Gaza, most of the buildings in Deir al-Balah are standing, the Times of Israel noted.
The Red Cross transferred the freed captives to members of the Israeli Army and Shin Bet inside Gaza, after which they were escorted out of the Strip to a military facility near the border to reunite with family members.
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