Coincidences are everywhere these days. Two senior officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were placed on leave this week — Steve Volz and Jeff Dillen, who combined to lead an investigation into the infamous incident in Trump’s first term involving a hurricane and a sharpie. That 2020 investigation centered on Neil Jacobs, then the acting administrator of NOAA, and found that he and a communications director violated the agency’s scientific integrity policy in their statements of support for Trump’s shenanigans.
And hey look, Neil Jacobs just had a confirmation hearing in the Senate to be NOAA administrator for real, and his confirmation vote now approaches. Weird!
First reported by CNN and then confirmed separately by Splinter with sources at NOAA, the suspensions of Volz and Dillen come as the agency is in the process of getting hollowed out by Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. When asked during his hearing, Jacobs said “I support the president’s budget,” about a proposal to slash NOAA’s funding by 25 percent — a move that even Congressional Republicans don’t seem to want, moving forward a spending bill that would more or less keep NOAA where it has been.
The Sharpiegate investigation, for what it’s worth, didn’t even recommend any punishment for Jacobs, instead outlining some policy changes and other moves designed to prevent a repeat of the incident. And all this for just the dumbest possible reasons: that Trump said a state would be impacted by a hurricane, and couldn’t back down because he literally doesn’t know that phrase, so NOAA released a statement admonishing its own National Weather Service and lying about those non-existent impacts. And then someone drew on a map.
And now two highly respected officials are on leave, fates uncertain. No matter how inane the grim descent into fascism has been, it can always — always — get dumber.
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