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

21. Department of Commerce · Major

Fully commercialize National Weather Service forecasting operations

Not started

675 21. Department of Commerce

“The NWS provides data the private companies use and should focus on its data-gathering services. Because private companies rely on these data, the NWS should fully commercialize its forecasting operations.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    The National Weather Service still issues federal forecasts and warnings. Nothing in the window proposes handing forecasting to the private sector: NOAA's FY2026 and FY2027 budget submissions ask to modernize and restructure NWS (cloud migration, radar replacement, AI-based numerical weather prediction) and to move OAR's weather-research lines into it — the opposite of shrinking it to a data provider. Congress moved further the other way in P.L. 119-74 §114 (2026-01-23), which directs that "The National Weather Service shall maintain staffing levels in order to fulfill the mission required under 15 U.S.C. 313 to protect life and property to the maximum extent possible."

Research log

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

Research notes

  • Negative searches (all logged in docs/research/ch-21.md): the Federal Register full text since 2025-01-20 has no document matching “National Weather Service” together with “commercializ”, and none matching “commercializ … forecast”; the Corpus holds only two Federal Register documents whose title names the NWS in the window (a Cooperative Observing Program comment request, 2026-05-07, and an FAA proposed rule, 2026-05-22); the whitehouse.gov presidential-actions corpus has no NWS document.
  • Contrary Primary sources, loaded this session, now carried as evidence on the not started event under playbook §3b: P.L. 119-74, Commerce title §114 (the NWS staffing floor), and NOAA’s FY2026 Congressional Justification, which prioritizes “modernization of the NWS … prioritizing its core mission, restructuring the field, migrating its primary weather interactive processing system to the cloud, evolving the radar program, and operationalizing AI-based numerical weather predictions”.
  • One data point in the Mandate’s direction, recorded as a note rather than as Evidence for the ask: the FAA’s proposed rule Flexibility Enhancements of Weather Reporting Systems (2026-05-22) says “The National Weather Service no longer provides weather reports in the capacity described in the relevant provisions of the regulations” and would substitute FAA reports and “other sources approved by the Administrator” — https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/05/22/2026-10286/flexibility-enhancements-of-weather-reporting-systems. That is a withdrawal from one aviation reporting duty, not commercialization of NWS forecasting; a reviewer may disagree.
Action
eliminate
Object
National Weather Service forecasting operations
ID
1868