Science faces foreclosure

PRESENTED BY EUMETSAT OSI SAF

Notwithstanding the retraction of Big Balls [Update: Big Balls then dropped on Social Security], DOGE isn’t dead. Wielded by the Project 2025 Svengali and Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought from his Eisenhower Executive Office lair, the oil-fueled DOGE chainsaw continues to buzz through the U.S. government. This week we’re seeing catastrophic cuts to American scientific enterprise:

• Climate.Gov was shut down.

• The National Science Foundation is getting evicted from its Alexandria, Va. headquarters.

• The National Aeronautic and Space Administration is on the chopping block, with plans to mothball its DC headquarters.

• And crucial climate satellite data, used for everything from sea ice to hurricane measurements, is getting shut off.

At an all-hands online meeting accidentally shared with the public and reported by Jeff Foust, acting NASA administrator Janet Petro glumly announced the plan to kick NASA out of DC, in line with a February DOGE memo and Trump’s plan to slash NASA’s budget.

“We’re considering moving most functions currently being performed in D.C. out to where the work is being executed,” Petro euphemised, “and refocusing the work done in D.C. to setting strategic direction and engaging with our external partners.”

“NASA’s senior leaders did acknowledge Wednesday that the pain of the agency's downsizing will extend far outside of the agency's walls,“ ArsTechnica reporter Stephen Clark wrote, comparing the presentation to a hostage statement.

Both NASA and NSF are in literal retreat, Monisha Ravisetti reports. They both pulled out of the American Astronomical Society's 246th meeting earlier this month. NASA also withdrew from the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in March and cancelled its International Space Station Research and Development Conference originally planned for July.

“During Trump's presidency, NASA's transformation into an incubator for private industry is likely to gain speed,” Loren Grush writes. “The agency’s position at the vanguard of discovery is facing foreclosure.”

Activists are staging a protest on Monday morning in front of the NASA headquarters at 300 E St SW.

The Trump regime has picked out a special present for my birthday on Monday! Lucky me.

Let me just open it early … Critical Hurricane Forecast Tool Abruptly Terminated!

“NOAA distributed a service change notice to all users, including the National Hurricane Center,” tropical meteorologist Michael Lowry writes, “that by next Monday, June 30th, they would no longer receive real-time microwave data collected aboard three weather satellites jointly run by NOAA and the U.S. Department of Defense.”

"The permanent discontinuation of data from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager Sounder (SSMIS) will severely impede and degrade hurricane forecasts for this season and beyond, affecting tens of millions of Americans who live along its hurricane-prone shorelines."

“SSMIS is also used by forecasters to peer underneath the clouds of hurricanes to assess their location, cloud structure, and intensity,” hurricane specialist Bryan Tang, a professor at UAlbany, explains. “Losing SSMIS is another blow that will further degrade our ability to monitor and forecast hurricanes, just in time for the coming peak of hurricane season.”

Another user of the the microwave data is the NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center. So long U.S. sea ice measurements too!

The European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites Ocean and Sea Ice Satellite Application Facility (EUMETSAT OSI SAF) also posted an urgent warning to scientists on Wednesday to stop relying on SSMIS sea ice data.

The weather satellites providing the data, though nearing end-of-life, are working just fine, and the next-generation replacement satellite has been in orbit since last year. OSI SAF’s Gwenaël Le Bras explained the extension of ground operations for the old satellite was cut off as key personnel have been DOGEd by the U.S. Air Force and Navy.

In fact, all data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program is being discontinued. “This service change and termination will be permanent,” the alert issued on Wednesday evening read.

“Looking ahead, the ability to monitor polar sea ice is in safe hands,” the European Space Agency snarkily announced this week, pointing to climate satellites under their control.

Closer to (my) home, The 51st’s Martin Austermuhle reports on the Trumpian cuts to DC’s climate and environmental justice programs planned by Mayor Muriel Bowser:

In a very wonkish markup that began this morning and is continuing into the evening, the House Appropriations Republicans are working to dismantle Congress’s powers. The indefatigable Daniel Schulman is liveposting the atrocities. This is a Roman Senate, Reichstag-grade disaster. The Star Wars plotline, if you prefer.

What Else I’ve Been Reading:

Green-gentry politics have collapsed, as cleantech investors pledge themselves to the data-center techno-Moloch. But eco-socialist climate populism is on the rise. Kate Aronoff talks with UPS drivers about their hot-box trucks.

The corporate charter of the Nippon Steel takeover of US Steel specifically names Donald J. Trump to give him personal power over the company. Mike Masnick wonders what to call this, since it ain't nationalization.¹

Lina Khan and Zohran Mamdani are besties! Matt Stoller has the hot goss. Bronx native Chris Hayes is also feeling the Zomentum.

Greece fires are especially difficult to put out.

Bikes are freedom.

Hearings on the Hill:

• 10 AM: House Appropriations Committee
  Full Committee Markup of FY26 Legislative Branch Bill

• 10 AM: House Natural Resources Committee
     Federal Lands Subcommittee
  Forest Management Technologies

• 10:15 AM: House Energy and Commerce Committee
     Environment Subcommittee
  A Review of Congressional Action, Environmental Protection Agency Rules, and Uses for Coal Ash

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1  It’s fascism.