Monica Medina

Thank you so much, Ben, for having me and thanks for everything you do every day to bring all of this to light.

What the Trump administration is doing is absolutely gutting.

One of the nation's best little engines of progress and one of the government's most effective tools at keeping our country and Americans every day safe and efficient and effective and able to do their jobs.

and keeping them out of harm's way.

And in that moment of sort of budget cutting, Project 2025, absurd cuts to parts of the government that are not expensive and that provide services to people, everyday people,

24-7 every day, year in and year out, make your life better.

It's just, it's tragic.

A government agency like NOAA is about 10,000 people.

They're spread around the country.

They're not bureaucrats sitting in some tower in Washington, you know, shuffling papers.

There are people in communities all over the country that are bringing accurate weather forecasts so that

transportation can happen so that we can have farm products that we need to keep our food on our table so that we have insurance that we can afford because we are predicting and preparing ourselves for the climate that we see is changing.

So NOAA is a wonderful agency full of people who are dedicated to making Americans safer.

It's part of our

Homeland Security defenses, and they are just recklessly and chaotically cutting the agency.

And it's just tragic because we will have a hard time putting it all back together again.

What is happening today is that the cuts to our weather forecasting not only hurt us in communities and in local areas and states and across our nation, but it also hurts us globally because we are part of a bigger weather enterprise.

The weather systems that we experience are not localized at all.

In fact, they're part of

Earth system and without observations from all over the world, we can't make the best forecasts for us and we can't help others who need those forecasts.