Monica Medina

And I wouldn't call them natural because they're climate driven.

They're driven by the pollution that we put in the atmosphere every day by burning fossil fuels.

These climate disasters are getting more and more intense.

They're putting more people in harm's way.

And so at just the very time when we should be increasing our investment and doing more to understand these bigger forces in the weather that are around us, we are cutting back and putting ourselves in a much more vulnerable position.

having to depend on data from other countries, and really leaving a lot of citizens at risk.

And it's reckless.

It's just not necessary, because these agencies cost pennies a day for every American.

They're a cup of coffee a year to have these weather forecasts.

I can't imagine there's a single American who wouldn't pay $5 to have those kind of weather forecasts.

And the private weather services

all depend on the government's forecast in order to make their beautiful, you know, forecasts that you get on your phone every day.

You wouldn't have those if it weren't for the people in those jobs 24-7 churning out forecasts and who are willing to make the most difficult forecasts, which are the ones about those extreme weather events.

Private weather services won't be able to do that without the National Weather Service fully staffed and fully functioning.

What worries me the most is actually the disinformation that comes out of the Trump administration.

The fact that they say that climate change is a hoax.

The fact that they actually, some people on the right, for example, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, say things like the government was putting the disastrous weather into the places where they thought, you know, their political enemies were.

that there was some kind of weather modification happening out there to put people in harm's way by Democrats.

That's insane.

That's just not true.