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Hundreds of weather forecasters and other federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employees on probationary status were fired Thursday, lawmakers and weather experts said.
Federal workers who were not let go said the afternoon layoffs included meteorologists who do crucial local forecasts in National Weather Service offices across the country.
Cuts at NOAA appeared to be happening in two rounds, one of 500 and one of 800, said Craig McLean, a former NOAA chief scientist who said he got the information from someone with first-hand knowledge. That’s about 10% of NOAA’s workforce.
The first round of cuts were probationary employees, McLean said. There are about 375 probationary employees in the National Weather Service — where day-to-day forecasting and hazard warning are done.
The firings come amid efforts by billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency to shrink a federal workforce that President Donald Trump has called bloated and sloppy. Thousands of probationary employees across the government have already been fired.
Rep. Grace Meng, D-N.Y., released a statement saying: “Today, hundreds of employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), including weather forecasters at the National Weather Service (NWS), were given termination notices for no good reason. This is unconscionable.”
Meng added: “These are dedicated, hardworking Americans whose efforts help save lives and property from the devastating impacts of natural disasters across the country. This action will only endanger American lives going forward.”
Rep. Jared Huffman, a California Democrat who is the ranking minority member in the House Natural Resources Committee, also said “hundreds of scientists and experts at NOAA” were let go.
Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, said on social media that the job cuts “are spectacularly short-sighted, and ultimately will deal a major self-inflicted wound to the public safety of Americans and the resiliency of the American economy to weather and climate-related disasters.”
A grassroots organization is encouraging U.S. residents not to spend any money Friday as an act of “economic resistance” to protest what the group’s founder sees as the malign influence of billionaires, big corporations, and both major political parties on the lives of working Americans.
The People’s Union USA calls the 24 hours of spending abstinence set to start at midnight an “economic blackout,” a term that has since been shared and debated on social media. The activist movement said it also plans to promote weeklong consumer boycotts of particular companies, including Walmart and Amazon.
Other activists, faith-based leaders,and consumers already are organizing boycotts to protest companies that have scaled back their diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, and to oppose President Donald Trump’s moves to abolish all federal DEI programs and policies. Some faith leaders are encouraging their congregations to refrain from shopping at Target, one of the companies backing off DEI efforts, during the 40 days of Lent that begin Wednesday.
Here are some details about the various events and experts’ thoughts on whether having consumers keep their wallets closed is an effective tool for influencing the positions corporations take.
Who’s behind the ‘24-hour Economic Blackout?’
The People’s Union USA, which takes credit for initiating the no-spend day, was founded by John Schwarz, a meditation teacher who lives near the Chicago area, according to his social media accounts.
The organization’s website says it’s not tied to a political party but stands for all people. Requests for comment sent to the group’s email address this week did not receive a reply.
The planned blackout is scheduled to run from 12 a.m. EST through 11:59 p.m. EST on Friday. The activist group advised customers to abstain from making any purchases, whether in-store or online, but particularly not from big retailers or chains. It wants participants to avoid fast food and filling their car gas tanks, and says shoppers with emergencies or in need of essentials should support a local small business and try not to use a credit or debit card.
People’s Union plans another broad-based economic blackout on March 28, but it’s also organizing boycotts targeting specific retailers — Walmart and Amazon — as well as global food giants Nestle and General Mills. For the boycott against Amazon, the organization is encouraging people to refrain from buying anything from Whole Foods, which the e-commerce company owns.
What other boycotts are being planned?
Several boycotts are being planned, particularly aimed at Target. The discounter, which has backed diversity and inclusion efforts aimed at uplifting Black and LGBTQ+ people in the past, announced in January it was rolling back its DEI initiatives.
A labor advocacy group called We Are Somebody, led by Nina Turner, launched a boycott of Target on February 1 to coincide with Black History Month.
Meanwhile, an Atlanta-area pastor, the Rev. Jamal Bryant, organized a website called targetfast.org to recruit Christians for a 40-day Target boycott starting March 5, which marks Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. Other faith leaders have endorsed the protest.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, founder and president of the National Action Network, a civil rights organization, announced in late January it would identify two companies in the next 90 days that will be boycotted for abandoning their diversity, equity, and inclusion pledges. The organization formed a commission to identify potential candidates.
“Donald Trump can cut federal DEI programs to the bone, he can claw back federal money to expand diversity, but he cannot tell us what grocery store we shop at,” Sharpton said in a statement posted on the National Action Network’s website.
Will the events have any impact?
Some retailers may feel a slight pinch from Friday’s broad “blackout,” which is taking place in a tough economic environment, experts said. Renewed inflation worries and Trump’s threat of tariffs on imported goods already have had an effect on consumer sentiment.
“The (market share) pie is just so big,” Marshal Cohen, chief retail advisor at market research firm Circana, said. “You can’t afford to have your slices get smaller. Consumers are spending more money on food. And that means there’s more pressure on general merchandise or discretionary products.”
Still, Cohen thinks the overall impact may be limited, with any meaningful sales declines more likely to surface in liberal-leaning coastal regions and big cities.
Anna Tuchman, a marketing professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, said she thinks the economic blackout will likely make a dent in daily retail sales but won’t be sustainable.
“I think this is an opportunity for consumers to show that they have a voice on a single day,” she said. ”I think it’s unlikely that we would see long-run sustained decreases in economic activity supported by this boycott.”
Other boycotts have produced different results.
Target saw a drop in sales in the spring and summer quarter of 2023 that the discounter attributed in part to customer backlash over a collection honoring LGBTQ+ communities for Pride Month. As a result, Target didn’t carry Pride merchandise in all of its stores the following year.
Tuchman studied the impact of a boycott against Goya Foods during the summer of 2020 after the company’s CEO praised Trump. But her study, based on sales from research firm Numerator, found the brand saw a sales increase driven by first-time Goya buyers who were disproportionately from heavily Republican areas.
However, the revenue bump proved temporary; Goya had no detectable sales increase after three weeks, Tuchman said.
It was a different story for Bud Light, which spent decades as America’s bestselling beer. Sales plummeted in 2023 after the brand sent a commemorative can to a transgender influencer. Bud Light’s sales still haven’t fully recovered, according to alcohol consulting company Bump Williams.
Tuchman thinks a reason is that there were plenty of other beers that the brand’s mostly conservative customer base could buy to replace Bud Light.
Afya Evans, a political and image consultant in Atlanta, said she would make a point of shopping on Friday but will focus on small businesses and Black-owned brands.
Evans is aware of other boycotts but she said she liked this one because she believes it could have some effect on sales.
“It’s a broader thing,” she said. “We want to see what the impact is. Let everybody participate. And plan from there.”
A federal judge in San Francisco on Thursday found that the mass firings of probationary employees were likely unlawful, granting temporary relief to a coalition of labor unions and organizations that have sued to stop the Trump administration’s massive dismantling of the federal workforce.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup ordered the Office of Personnel Management to inform certain federal agencies that it had no authority to order the firings of probationary employees, including the Department of Defense.
“OPM does not have any authority whatsoever, under any statute in the history of the universe,” to hire or fire any employees but its own, Alsup said.
The complaint filed by five labor unions and five nonprofit organizations is among multiple lawsuits pushing back on the administration’s efforts to shrink a workforce that Trump has called bloated and sloppy. Thousands of probationary employees have already been fired, and his administration is now aiming at career officials with civil service protection.
Lawyers for the government agree that the office has no authority to hire or fire employees in other agencies.
But they said the Office of Personnel Management asked agencies to review and determine whether employees on probation were fit for continued employment. They also said that probationary employees are not guaranteed employment and that only the highest-performing and mission-critical employees should be hired.
“I think plaintiffs are conflating a request by OPM with an order by OPM,” said Kelsey Helland, an assistant U.S. attorney in court Thursday.
Attorneys for the coalition cheered the order, although it does not mean that fired employees will automatically be rehired or that future firings will not occur.
“What it means in practical effects is the agencies of the federal government should hear the court’s warning that that order was unlawful,” said Danielle Leonard, an attorney for the coalition, after the hearing.
“This ruling by Judge Alsup is an important initial victory for patriotic Americans across this country who were illegally fired from their jobs by an agency that had no authority to do so,” said Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees.
“These are rank-and-file workers who joined the federal government to make a difference in their communities, only to be suddenly terminated due to this administration’s disdain for federal employees and desire to privatize their work.”
An email seeking comment from the Office of Personnel Management was not immediately returned Thursday. Michelle Lo, an assistant U.S. attorney with the Department of Justice, declined to comment.
Alsup ordered the personnel office to inform a limited number of federal agencies represented by the five nonprofits that are plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which include veterans, parks, small businesses, and defense. He seemed particularly troubled by firings expected at the Department of Defense.
He also ordered the acting head of the personnel office, Charles Ezell, to testify in court about the nature of a Feb. 13 phone call in which agency heads were told to fire probationary employees.
“The agencies could thumb their noses at OPM if they wanted to if it’s guidance, but if it’s an order, or cast as an order, the agencies may think they have to comply,” he said.
Probationary employees say they received a template email
There are an estimated 200,000 probationary workers — generally employees who have less than a year on the job — across federal agencies. About 15,000 are employed in California, providing services ranging from fire prevention to veterans’ care, the complaint says.
Elon Musk has led the purge through the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, roiling the workforce with demands including a Saturday email sent through the personnel office ordering workers to list five things they did last week or risk getting fired. The Office of Personnel Management later said that the edict was voluntary, although workers could face similar requests in the future.
The plaintiffs said in their complaint that numerous agencies informed workers that the personnel office had ordered the terminations, with an order to use a template e-mail informing workers their firing was for performance reasons.
Probationary employees of the National Science Foundation, for example, were told by the foundation that it had decided to retain its workers but was overruled by the Office of Personnel Management, according to the complaint.
Unions have recently struck out with two other federal judges.
A judge in Washington, D.C., last week denied a motion from unions to temporarily block layoffs because he found their complaint should be heard in federal labor court. Earlier this month, a judge in Massachusetts said unions suing over a deferred resignation offer weren’t directly affected and so lacked legal standing to challenge it.
Alsup said labor unions likely lack legal standing to sue, but the nonprofit organizations likely have cause because their members will be denied government services resulting from the loss of workers, such as the enjoyment of parks, mental health services for veterans, and loans for small businesses.
Judge calls probationary employees ‘the lifeblood of our government’
He was appalled that probationary employees were fired with a mark against them for poor performance.
“Probationary employees are the lifeblood of our government,” he said, adding that they are younger employees who work their way up.
Alsup, appointed by President Bill Clinton Democrat, has presided over many high-profile cases and is known for his blunt talk. He oversaw the criminal probation of Pacific Gas & Electric, which he called a “ continuing menace to California.”
The judge plans to issue a written order. An evidentiary hearing is set for March 13.
According to a Labor Department report Thursday, jobless claims for the week ending Feb. 22 totaled a seasonally adjusted 242,000, up 22,000 from the previous week’s revised level and higher than the Dow Jones estimate for 225,000.
US slaps new 10% tariff on China
Additionally, Trump will introduce another 10% tariff on China, escalating the trade war. Economists expect China to withstand these tariffs.
He is also considering reciprocal tariffs on countries that tax U.S. exports, such as those in Europe, with an announcement planned by April 4.
In light of these trade tensions, investors may benefit from stocks of companies less impacted by tariffs, such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Eli Lilly, Merck, Netflix, and Spotify.
A selloff in large technology stocks intensified on Thursday as investors grew increasingly concerned about the potential impact of the latest tariff threats. All three major stock indexes declined, with the Nasdaq recording the sharpest drop. Shares of AI chipmaking powerhouse Nvidia tumbled more than 8%, despite its earnings beating expectations — one analyst noted that the results coincide with an “extremely jittery” time in the markets.
The numbers: Dow Jones: -0.5%; S&P 500: -1.6%; Nasdaq: -2.8%.
Google told staffers in its “People Operations” and cloud organizations this week that it plans to cut employees as a part of internal reorganizations, CNBC has learned.
The company will offer a voluntary exit program to staffers in U.S.-based People Operations, Google’s human relations division, starting in early March, according to a memo issued by HR chief Fiona Cicconi that was viewed by CNBC.
Separately, the company also made cuts to several teams within its cloud unit, mostly impacting operations support staff. Some of those moves include moving roles to other countries.
The latest cuts come after finance chief Anat Ashkenazi said one of her top priorities would be to drive more cost-cutting as Google expands its spending on AI infrastructure in 2025. After the company reported revenue that missed expectations for the fourth quarter earlier this month, Ashkenazi said that the company had strong demand for AI products and that it “exited the year with more demand than we had available capacity.”
Cloud is one of the company’s high-growth business units and benefits from AI products. Alphabet has been drawing profit from the cloud business as it tries to keep up with market leaders Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.
The company confirmed the org changes to CNBC, saying reorganizations are part of the normal course of business. The number of layoffs is unclear, but the company said it's a small quantity in the cloud unit and that the organization continues to hire for critical sales and engineering roles.
Stanford is the latest university to institute a hiring freeze as uncertainties persist around federal policy changes, particularly proposed cuts to direct federal funding for scientific research through the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia, Northwestern, and other schools have made similar moves, even though a legal challenge blocked the NIH cuts, for now. The American Council on Education says the cuts would cost jobs and stifle innovation and global competition.
Warner Bros. Discovery's Max notched strong fourth-quarter growth, adding 6.4 million subscribers worldwide to reach 116.9 million users. It also noted a "clear path" to 150 million subscribers by the end of 2026. Max announced it is pulling B/R Sports and CNN verticals from its basic, ad-supported tier on March 30th, likely to lure those subscribers to pricier tiers. The entertainment giant's direct-to-consumer business, which includes streaming, turned a $677 million profit last year compared to $103 million in 2023.
Rents in Austin have plunged 22% since a peak in August 2023, the steepest decrease of any major city nationwide, Bloomberg reports. The downtrend marks a sharp reversal from 2021 when a pandemic-era surge in new residents pushed rents up 25%. But since then, the Texas capital has seen a spike in property development as well as new policies promoting housing density, leading to a significant increase in vacancy rates.
To boost foot traffic and reach new customers, Target is ramping up its “shop-in-shops” initiative, announcing plans to add five Warby Parker eyewear locations. The shops, staffed by Warby Parker employees, will open in the second half of this year and more locations will debut in 2026. The partnership comes as Target works to revive its sales growth and Warby Parker branches out into large retailers.