Hurricane Helene has derailed the Republican presidential ticket’s campaign across the South, forcing Trump’s vice presidential pick, J.D. Vance, to cancel several stops in Georgia. But the 20-foot storm surge–inducing, tornado-spawning weather event hasn’t yet changed Trump’s stance on his plan to tear down the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, root and branch.
The climate agency, whose responsibilities include providing free weather forecasts as well as tracking and predicting hurricanes, would be completely gutted under Project 2025, the 920-page Christian nationalist manifesto that purports to be Trump’s second-term agenda. (Trump has haltingly and not particularly convincingly attempted to disavow Project 2025; a recently unearthed video features one of the project’s authors bragging that there will be “one-to-one mirroring” of the policies laid out in the document and Trump’s proposals.)
“The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories,” the proposal reads on page 664.
That would effectively privatize weather forecasts, forcing U.S. citizens to pay for weather subscriptions that would include national weather alert systems for emergencies like flash flooding, extreme heat, earthquakes, and others.
Project 2025 has advanced a slew of seemingly outrageous policy positions, including tearing down staples of the executive branch, such as the Department of Education. It also proposes revisiting federal approval of the abortion pill, banning pornography nationwide, placing the Justice Department under the control of the president, slashing federal funds for climate change research in an effort to sideline mitigation efforts, and increasing funding for the U.S.-Mexico border wall.
Trump has spent months trying to distance his campaign from Project 2025, but a flurry of the Republican presidential nominee’s recent comments, which include reiterating his intention to demolish the Department of Education, has practically glued him to its policy points.
By Friday afternoon—less than 24 hours after the Category Four storm made landfall on Florida’s coast—22 people were dead, and 4.5 million locals were without power, reported USA Today.
