Project 2025 April 17th Update

On a brisk Monday morning in April, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle found themselves relegated to scrubbing toilets. The ecologists, chemists, and biologists who typically monitor endangered salmon populations and test seafood safety were hauling trash, searching for compost bags, and contemplating a sign-up sheet for bathroom cleaning duties. The custodial staff had vanished — their contracts allowed to expire without renewal by the Department of Commerce.

The agency’s neglect represents just one ripple in a much larger tempest now engulfing NOAA, America’s premier weather and climate science institution. The Trump administration, drawing directly from the Heritage Foundation’s controversial Project 2025 policy blueprint, has initiated what former NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad describes as “step one in the deconstruction of the agency.” 

Project 2025 — the 922-page right-wing  policy handbook that serves as the intellectual roadmap for Trump’s second term — minces no words about its intentions: “Break up NOAA,” it reads, declaring that “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.” As Project 2025 has moved from wish list to reality, that once-hypothetical vision is now being systematically implemented, with potentially catastrophic implications for America’s ability to forecast storms, protect coastal communities and manage fisheries. 

The mechanics of this dismantling were revealed in an Office of Management and Budget preliminary “passback memorandum” obtained by multiple news organizations, which outlines plans to slash NOAA’s overall budget by 27 percent and completely eliminate its Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) — the agency’s primary scientific arm. The remaining research functions would be scattered across other departments, fragmenting decades of institutional knowledge and expertise. 

“This is a huge threat to research at NOAA, but also to the safety and economic security of the American public,” warns Craig McLean, a former assistant administrator for research at the agency. 

The OAR oversees 10 specialized laboratories and 16 cooperative institutes that collaborate with university scientists on vital functions Americans take for granted: the hurricane forecasts that allow coastal evacuations, the tornado warnings that save lives across the country, the ocean monitoring that supports commercial fishing, and the climate data that helps farmers anticipate drought conditions. Its National Severe Storms Laboratory studies destructive weather systems and works to increase warning lead times when deadly tornadoes form. 

Under the administration’s plan, these laboratories face defunding, with scientists already terminated or in limbo. Some 800 positions have been eliminated in recent weeks, including workers who track El Niño-La Niña weather patterns, model severe storms, and monitor ocean conditions. Terminated hurricane hunter and researcher Dr. Andy Hazelton wrote: “Well after about 3 weeks of reinstatement, I, along with other probationary employees at NOAA, officially got ‘re-fired’ today. What a wild and silly process this has been.” In an interview with The Guardian, he added: “It’s going to create problems across the board… the forecasts are going to suffer and as a result people will suffer.” 

The budget document specifically instructs NOAA to zero out “all funding for climate, weather and ocean laboratories and cooperative institutes housed primarily at major research universities.” It also eliminates high-profile coastal management initiatives like the Sea Grant program that allocates millions of dollars for education and research at 34 universities on the coasts and Great Lakes. These programs develop the next generation of ocean scientists and provide crucial technical support to coastal communities preparing for storm surge and sea level rise.

Perhaps most alarmingly, the administration has targeted NOAA’s satellite systems — the technological backbone of modern weather forecasting. The plan calls for canceling or dramatically scaling back next-generation Earth-observing satellites, including the crucial Geostationary Extended Observations (GeoXO) program designed to replace aging weather satellites. The memo specifically directs the program to remove climate monitoring instruments from future weather satellites, focusing exclusively on immediate weather data rather than long-term environmental observation.

“This will put American communities in harm’s way,” says Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen, who represents many NOAA employees. “This move has nothing to do with efficiency — and in fact, it will endanger our communities and leave us all more vulnerable to destructive and costly natural disasters.” 

The administration’s plan also fundamentally reshapes NOAA’s mission, shifting the agency’s priorities toward fossil fuel production. It orders NOAA Fisheries to “prioritize permitting and consultation activities in order to support Administration priorities and unleash American energy.” Meanwhile, habitat conservation, species recovery efforts, and interjurisdictional grants face elimination. The Space Weather Prediction Center, which monitors solar activity for harmful radiation events, would be transferred to the Department of Homeland Security. 

Andrew Rosenberg, former deputy director of NOAA Fisheries under the Obama administration, called the restructuring plan “devastating, idiotic and abusive.” He warns that separating scientific research from regulatory functions will create dangerous knowledge gaps when management decisions must be made about endangered marine species or fishing quotas. 

“Refusing to accept the scientific reality of climate change and gutting the nation’s ability to understand those changes won’t make climate impacts go away. Instead, cities, states and our country will be left flying blind into this oncoming disaster, without the information they urgently need to get out ahead in responding to worsening risks,” the Union of Concerned Scientists wrote on April 16, 2025, in a plea to Congress to stand up to the Trump administration and defend science. “This is not efficiency; this is not going to save money. This is, quite literally, going to cost lives and lead to mounting, incredibly expensive damage to our economy.”

The Resurrection Myth: De-Exctinction and the Endangered Species List 

Playing off a soupçon of Jurassic Park magic, biotech announced the latest miracle of science in the form of several white-furred canines kept on a secretive 2,000-acre compound at an undisclosed location. These creatures, bearing the mythologically inspired names Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi, represent what company Colossal Biosciences controversially calls “the first successful case of de-extinction.” These are wolf pups engineered to resurrect traits of the long-extinct dire wolf, popularized in Game of Thrones lore, an Ice Age predator that vanished from North America approximately 13,000 years ago.

Beneath this scientific achievement lies a complex narrative about conservation politics, the future of endangered species protection, and the role of technological optimism in environmental policy.

The announcement comes during a restructuring of America’s conservation frameworks and a general war on science, and under Trump these genetically modified wolves have taken on a symbolic role in an escalating battle. 

For the Trump administration, killing off an entire species or destroying its natural habitat in the name of economic development is not such a big deal if scientific “de-extinction” is in play, and there’s no need for an endangered species list.

Colossal Biosciences, valued at $10 billion as of January, claims to have engineered gray wolves by editing 20 of the wolves’ 19,000 genes, with dire wolf traits like size and color. The company began by isolating gray wolf blood cells found in an ear bone and a tooth, tinkering with their DNA in laboratory dishes, and introducing dire wolf mutations to 15 genes collected from ancient DNA. Five other genes from modern dogs and wolves were added to the mix, and the embryos were implanted in the wombs of surrogate hound-mix mothers and delivered by caesarian section.

The three pups — two males now six months old and one female at two months — have pale coats, unusual bushiness in their tails, mane-like neck fur, and are approximately 20 percent larger than gray wolves of comparable age.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum seized upon the development with remarkable enthusiasm, revealing the administration’s broader agenda for environmental regulation in which endangered species and their habitats get in the way of economic development. 

“The Endangered Species List has become like the Hotel California: once a species enters, they never leave,” Burgum declared in a manifesto-like policy statement. “In fact, 97 percent of species that are added to the endangered list remain there. This is because the status quo is focused on regulation more than innovation.” 

This rhetorical positioning lines up well with Project 2025’s explicit agenda for environmental policy, which calls for “reform” of the Endangered Species Act, including specific delisting targets such as the grizzly bear and gray wolf, while ending the Act’s power to “seize private property, prevent economic development, and interfere with the rights of states.” 

The Interior Secretary’s rhetoric is an inversion of conservation priorities, where getting rid of the Endangered Species List, rather than the conditions that lead to extinction, is top priority: “The only thing we’d like to see go extinct is the need for an endangered species list to exist.” This framing continues with his assessment that “it has been innovation — not regulation — that has spawned American greatness.” 

The grizzly bear is an example of the practical implications of the administration’s new priorities. Notably, Trump’s imminent dissolution of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team, which has monitored Yellowstone’s grizzly population since 1970, represents a complete disregard for institutional knowledge.

“It’s functionally destroying the organization,” warns Chris Servheen, who coordinated grizzly bear recovery for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service until 2016. “The study team has been in place since 1970 — over 50 years of work and experience and knowledge. It’s going to just disappear and die,” Servheen lamented.“How could anybody be so negligent and vile that they’re trying to destroy something that has brought grizzly bears back from the edge of extinction?” he said. “Why would you do that? It’s just so destructive.” 

The systematic unraveling began with a hiring freeze, followed by the early retirement of the team’s leader due to political upheaval — a pattern repeated across federal science agencies that tracks with Project 2025’s vision for dismantling government, no matter what the cost. “They’re putting fear into people,” Servheen noted. “That’s basically evil, to do that to hard-working people who have been civil servants for decades.”

For wild horses and burros — creatures deeply embedded in America’s cultural mythology — the administration’s approach represents a more explicit existential threat. Project 2025 ominously states: “Congress must enact laws permitting the BLM to dispose humanely of these animals.” This seemingly innocuous sentence advocating for the slaughter of majestic animals has alarmed advocates. According to American Wild Horse Conservation, a 2017 poll found that 80% of Americans and 86% of Trump voters supported not killing wild horses and burros. 

Perhaps most revealing is Burgum’s characterization of conservation as misguided: “It’s time to fundamentally change how we think about species conservation. Going forward, we must celebrate removals from the endangered list — not additions.” 

Burgum is doing just that. “The revival of the Dire Wolf heralds the advent of a thrilling new era of scientific wonder, showcasing how the concept of ‘de-extinction’ can serve as a bedrock for modern species conservation,” Burgum’s statement continues, positioning genetic engineering as superior to traditional habitat protection that wild horses, gray wolves and grizzlies currently enjoy. 

In live remarks that expand upon his written statement, Burgum told Interior Department employees during a town hall, “If we’re going to be in anguish about losing a species, now we have an opportunity to bring them back,” adding with remarkable casualness. “Pick your favorite species and call up Colossal,” he says, referring to the biotech company.

In Burgum’s world, extinction can now be undone and thus conservation isn’t a priority, or even a concern. This parallels Project 2025’s ambitions. Congress, it argues, needs to retool the Endangered Species Act, end its “reliance on so-called species specialists,” and “end its use to seize private property, prevent economic development, and interfere with the rights of states over their wildlife populations.” 

Wildlife biologists such as Stanford’s Paul R. Ehrlich have dedicated their careers to preventing extinctions, and the administration’s policies will have profound implications: “The moral hazard in this work is gigantic, as its support by the Trump organization shows. Effort put into re-creating dire wolves only makes the threat to our civilization more dire, especially in view of the administration’s large-scale assault on our life-support systems and on science.” 

Julie Meachen, a Des Moines University paleontologist who helped unravel the dire wolf genome, expresses concern that the administration will use de-extinction concepts “as a carte blanche to delist all the endangered species,” emphasizing that “this technology does not replace protections for endangered species.” 

Burgum, however, sees no issue with trading environmental stewardship for economic development, and concludes his statement on the dire wolves with unabashed techno-optimism: “Breakthroughs of this nature will inspire leading minds and future generations of innovators to chase the impossible, capture it, and unleash its potential!” 

The “impossible” America’s remaining grizzlies, wild horses, and other endangered species are facing is surviving this administration’s vision of ecological progress.

The New McCarthyism: Rubio’s Hunt For Anti-Christian Bias

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s recent directive establishing an anonymous reporting system for “anti-Christian bias” within the State Department has moved beyond traditional conservative policy to what veteran political journalist Charles Pierce describes in Esquire as having “zoomed right past McCarthyism to something resembling East Germany.” 

The retroactive directive, which brings to life key aspects of Project 2025’s vision for federal agencies that it believes have wronged Christians, specifically targets alleged incidents that occurred during President Biden’s term, from January 2021 to January 2025. Issued on April 11, employees were given just seven days, until April 18, to report nefarious occurrences like “mistreatment for opposing displays of flags, banners or other paraphernalia,”  “policies related to preferred personal pronouns,” or “refusing to participate in events or activities that promote themes inconsistent with or hostile to one’s religious beliefs.” These egregious instances will be compiled in a preliminary report due on April 22. 

The State Department’s new policy creates what one department official described to Politico as a “‘Handmaid’s Tale’-esque” work environment, complete with an informant system that furthers Project 2025’s agenda to identify and remove federal employees deemed insufficiently supportive of conservative Christian values. It also raises serious concerns about surveillance culture within government agencies and creates a chilling effect on religious diversity reminiscent of authoritarian regimes.