Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick oversees the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and its subsidiary, the National Weather Service. But until recently, he also ran a financial firm, Cantor Fitzgerald (which he placed under the stewardship of his two 20-something sons), that invests in companies vying to replace the weather agencies’ labor.
Lutnick’s most recent ethics filing revealed that he is still in the process of selling off his shares in the company. Securities and Exchange Commission filings obtained by the Associated Press indicate that Lutnick’s stakes aren’t going far—instead, he’s been transferring them to one of his sons.
Trump has been attacking the country’s public weather monitoring systems since he was on the campaign trail, promising to dismantle NOAA since Hurricane Helene devastated the South.
Two months later, the administration proposed formal plans to eviscerate the rest of NOAA’s budget. In internal documents obtained by CNN, the White House claimed that the agency’s myriad weather-related programs were “misaligned with the … expressed will of the American people.”
But losing NOAA and its federally-funded research would have immediate ramifications for the average American. It would effectively privatize weather forecasts, forcing U.S. citizens to pay for weather subscriptions to replace what currently feels commonplace, such as national weather alert systems for emergencies such as flash flooding, tornadoes, extreme heat, earthquakes, or otherwise.
“The Weather Service did a good job with the information you had here. I don’t think the staffing cuts contributed to this,” Andy Hazelton, one of the recently laid off NOAA climate scientists, told the BBC. “But this is the kind of event we can see more of if the cuts to NOAA continue, if you make the models worse or have the staffing levels lower.”
“It’s the most insidious aspect of this: Are we really talking about making weather products available only to those who can afford it?” Rick Spinrad, a former NOAA administrator under President Joe Biden, told the Associated Press. “Basically turning the weather service into a subscription streaming service? As a taxpayer, I don’t want to be in the position of saying, ‘I get a better weather forecast because I’m willing to pay for it.’”
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