Key senator makes bipartisan plea to Trump to invest in weather and early warning networks
Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington and the ranking member of the Senate commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, is advocating that the administration work with Congress to pursue bipartisan investments and outlined her plans in a letter addressed to Trump sent Monday.
The letter spells out five recommendations to improve America's weather forecasting infrastructure, such as collecting far more observations and modernizing alert systems.
The letter comes in the wake of devastating flash floods in Texas on the night of July 4 that killed more than 130 people. It also is being sent at a time when the Trump administration has reduced staffing at the National Weather Service and proposed even more significant cuts, such as eliminating NOAA's research arm and shutting down its many research centers. These labs contribute to forecast, technology and warning improvements.
CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.
All told, the Trump White House's budget proposal would shave off about $1.7 billion from the NOAA budget, about a 27% cut from current levels.
Cantwell does not push back against the cuts in the letter but rather pitches an investment plan to try to appeal to the administration's desire to make America the leading nation again in many areas.
'We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create the world's best weather forecasting system that would provide Americans with much more detailed and customized alerts days instead of minutes ahead of a looming extreme weather event,' Cantwell wrote.
A noteworthy omission from the letter is any reference to climate change and the relationship between climate change and extreme weather events. The administration has taken a host of actions to rollback climate regulations and stifle climate science research at multiple agencies.
The Texas floods have raised questions about NWS readiness for extreme weather events in the wake of staff cuts. The agency is scrambling to hire about 150 forecasters to fill the most critical gaps left by layoffs, early retirements and other incentives the Trump administration offered people to leave government service. Even with 150 new hires, who will take time to train, the NWS will still be more thinly staffed than at the start of the Trump administration.
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The letter endorses next generation weather satellites, radars and new hurricane hunter aircraft to replace the current aging fleet, along with computing capabilities to catch up with, and eventually pass, the superior accuracy of European forecast centers.
It also puts an emphasis on modernizing weather alert systems — a key topic in the wake of the disaster in Texas. Notably, it also endorses putting more money, not less, into 'basic and applied research.'
Cantwell is in step with her colleagues on both sides of the aisle on the Senate Commerce Committee, who rejected most of the administration's proposed cuts in an initial fiscal year 2026 spending bill. House appropriators did the same, although the Trump administration has indicated it may seek other ways to restrict funding for agencies such as NOAA.
'Americans should have the best weather system. Why not?' Cantwell said on CNN this morning.
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