The mass firing of employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration could have major consequences for Oregon. Oregon now has fewer federal employees studying the ocean, atmosphere, climate and weather,

A crowd of federal workers, supporters and lawmakers rallied Monday outside the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Maryland, protesting job cuts by President Donald Trump’s administration. News4’s Joseph Olmo spoke with Reps. Jamie Raskin and Glenn Ivey of Maryland.

The cuts could have life-or-death consequences, according to critics of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency.

Donald Trump claimed that the email was somehow intended to catch out nonexistent government employees—but the true purpose has emerged: to see how closely federal agencies are following the president’s agenda and sweeping executive orders, even as they face an onslaught of legal challenges.

Weather experts predict that Elon Musk's latest round of government firings at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), including at the National Weather Service, will almost certainly make it more difficult to predict dangerous weather emergencies as quickly as needed.

Mass firings at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are raising alarms among former agency heads and scientists, who warn the cuts could put lives at risk and hurt the U.S. economy.

Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, said on social media that the job cuts "are spectacularly short-sighted, and ultimately will deal a major self-inflicted wound to the public safety of Americans and the resiliency of the American economy to weather and climate-related disasters.”

Hundreds of weather forecasters and other federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employees on probationary status were fired

A federal judge in California ruled late Thursday President Trump and Elon Musk’s mass firings of probationary government employees were illegal, siding with a coalition of labor unions and nonprofit groups.

Mark Eakin, a recently retired NOAA veteran who ran its Coral Reef Watch program for many years, told the Miami Herald he was alarmed by the “indiscriminate” slashes throughout the agency, which oversees everything from cutting-edge climate research to day-to-day operations that farmers and fishers rely on, as well as life-saving weather warnings.