Several recent articles appearing in publications ranging from “Foreign Affairs” to the New Yorker have posited a notion MAGA adherents “think differently” than mainstream policy geeks within both major political parties. No better evidence of this disconnect can be found than John Bolton’s recent essay in the Atlantic titled, “The Only Question Trump Asks Himself.” Bolton, who served for 15 months as Trump’s national security adviser during his first term, observes, “Trump does not have a policy or national security grand strategy. He does not do “policy” as Washington understands that term. His approach is personal, transactional, ad hoc, episodic, centering on one question: what benefits Donald Trump?”

This analysis corresponds with my own perception our second-act president fails to view himself as the inheritor of a 250-year, near sacred legacy for defending and enhancing the liberties and prosperity of a democracy properly belonging to all the American people. Rather, he views his presidency as a winning lottery ticket to seek personal enrichment and pursue whatever grievances or preferences he entertains at any particular moment. If these whims encompass retribution against agents or actors his MAGA adherents also resent, all the better. Clutching his criminal impunity certificate from the Supreme Court, he has made it clear he believes his Article 2 powers allow him to do pretty much anything that pops into his head.

The foregoing framing prompts us to consider the impending fate of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), headquartered in Boulder. From a workforce of 13,000 employees, 1,300, or 10%, have already retired or been laid off under pressure from the budget cutters at DOGE. Another thousand are scheduled for departure. This 18% reduction in staff is not likely to prove the last. What do all these federal workers do? The short version is they watch and forecast our weather, monitor air quality and the health of our fisheries and oceans. The national Weather Service (NWS) was created about 1870, spun-out of the Department of War’s Signal Service. Accurate weather predictions were becoming increasingly important to a spectrum of industrial and agricultural communities.

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Accuracy slowly improved as scientific research honed the reliability of forecasts and weather reporting stations were integrated into a network of constant and simultaneous reporting. Yet it was only with the arrival of commercial aviation, that improved accuracy became critical. As a kid, I read the “Ted Scott Flying Stories” that belonged to my father as a boy. Written by John Duffield under the same pseudonym, F. W. Dixon, he used for his Hardy Boys series, I devoured them all. Ted Scott was an intrepid aviator and World War I dogfight hero. I distinctly recall the importance blizzard warnings played in “Over the Rockies with the Air Mail.” A snow field landing featured somewhere in that volume.

Though Weather Service forecasts gradually improved, it would still be 1938 before it was confident enough to issue tornado and hurricane warnings. This early warning system has since expanded to 122 local Weather Forecast Offices, supported by more than 2,000 unmanned weather observatories. Most NWS forecasts are issued in the public domain and are available free to the public. That, of course, may soon change. As with so many policy questions today, there are two ways of considering weather forecasts. First and the most accepted is our government should certainly collect, predict and alert the public. Alternatively, forecasting has real market value to certain businesses that would be willing to pay for prompt notice. This is a service that could pay for itself.

That is certainly the argument offered by the chief executive of the country’s largest private weather forecasting service, who paid a million dollars for a membership in President Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago club, where he dines and lobbies his friend Donald regularly. Any review of Project 2025 reveals its intention to privatize as many existing government offices as possible. The transfer of the taxpayer-built network of reporting stations to a private owner will be tricky, and the result will be to deny free weather forecasts to small family farmers, local transit operators and rural airports, among others. They simply won’t be able to afford a privatized service. Would this constitute a dereliction of duty on the part of Congress and the federal government? That will be for voters to decide somewhere in the future.

Another task NOAA undertakes is research on what is happening to our air and ocean waters. Two recent reports make me wonder who will pursue their implications. The international conference on microplastic contamination was unable to reach agreement on a joint statement this past December, but they did discuss the fact these particles may hinder photosynthesis in crops and reduce it as well in the plankton which underlie the seabed food chain. Furthermore, microplastics appear to be “stoking antibiotic resistanc” in bacteria. If this sounds alarming, it is. I can’t help speculating whether there may be a connection, as well, to the rapid increase in cancer diagnoses among young adults. With microplastics turning up in our spinal fluid and semen, it’s hard to believe we don’t have a problem.

Alas, the NOAA scientists and CDC researchers who would examine this evidence are being sacked by DOGE. The private sector won’t undertake the necessary investigation since there’s no profit in it. Phytoplankton photosynthesis efficiency has been reduced by 7% in recent decades and so has fishery productivity. Sounds like a correlation exists to me. So, who is researching microplastic affect on crops: Professor Huan Zhong, at Nanjing University in China. He reports, “Humanity has been striving to increase food production … (but) these efforts are now being jeopardized by plastic pollution. These findings underscore the urgency to safeguard global food supplies.” Wouldn’t you feel better if this finding originated at an American university? Let’s face it, science remains true whether MAGA zealots think differently, or not.

Miller Hudson is a public affairs consultant and a former Colorado legislator.