Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

21. Department of Commerce · Major · Needs Congress

Break up and downsize NOAA

Attempted

675 21. Department of Commerce

“Together, these form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity. … It should be broken up and downsized.”

What has happened

  1. Attempted

    The FY2027 President's Budget renewed both halves of the proposal: another $1.6 billion cut to NOAA operations, research and grants, and consolidation of ESA and MMPA permitting "into a single program at DOI" so that "NOAA [can] refocus on management of commercial and recreational fisheries". NOAA's FY2027 Congressional Justification again requests $0 and 0 FTE for OAR.

  2. Attempted

    NOAA's FY2026 Congressional Justification spelled out the break-up: eliminate the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research as a NOAA line office and move surviving activities to the National Ocean Service and the National Weather Service, and transfer NOAA's Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act functions to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service except fishing-related ones. A proposal in a budget submission; none of it was carried out. Congress declined the break-up: P.L. 119-74 (2026-01-23) appropriated $4,540,392,000 for NOAA Operations, Research, and Facilities for FY2026, kept the agency whole, and in §114 of the Commerce title directed that "The National Weather Service shall maintain staffing levels in order to fulfill the mission required under 15 U.S.C. 313". The refusal is recorded here rather than as an event of its own: a refusal is not an attempt.

  3. Attempted

    OMB's FY2026 discretionary budget request asked Congress to cut NOAA operations, research and grants by $1.311 billion and NOAA weather-satellite procurement by $209 million, on the ground that NOAA grants fund "climate alarmism". A request; no line office was moved or closed.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • NOAA is still one agency with the same line offices. noaa.gov/research (loaded 2026-08-27) still describes OAR as a NOAA line office; NOAA’s own FY2027 Congressional Justification puts the FY2026 enacted base for OAR at $473.4 million and 736 FTE, which is what the FY2027 request proposes to zero out — proof that Congress funded the office the FY2026 request had proposed to abolish.
  • No executive order, reorganization plan or Department Organization Order restructuring NOAA appears in the Federal Register for the window (a full-text search for “Department Organization Order” since 2025-01-20 returns nothing), and neither the whitehouse.gov presidential-actions corpus nor fr-presdocu contains a document mentioning NOAA.
  • The FY2027 Budget carries only “April 2026” on its transmittal page; NOAA’s FY2027 Congressional Justification is likewise undated beyond the month. Both events are dated 2026-04-01.
  • Overlaps #1878 (disband OAR climate research), which owns the OAR detail, and #1876 (rewrite the MMPA and ESA regulations), which owns the ESA/MMPA rulemaking trail.
Action
abolish
Object
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
ID
1867