The White House has apparently decided that some of the administration’s DOGE-directed firings were a mistake.
The National Weather Service has received permission to hire hundreds of employees, CNN reported Tuesday. That includes 450 meteorologists, hydrologists, and radar technicians to replace the ones that were let go from the agency at the behest of former DOGE chief Elon Musk.
The order also includes 126 openings for “front-line mission critical” personnel that had been previously approved, according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration official who spoke with CNN.
The agency’s recent shortcomings became especially apparent in the aftermath of the Texas floods, which overwhelmed local NWS offices that had experienced reductions. The floods, which arrived unannounced by the agency, killed at least 120 people, including 35 children.
Cuts to the department had severed contracts for more than 550 people, dropping the weather service’s staffing levels to below 4,000 total employees and sparking fears that the country could find itself terribly ill prepared amid peak hurricane season. It’s possible that some of the new hires could be former employees brought back to the agency.
NWS employees have been cautiously receptive to the news, which was first announced at an all-hands meeting on Monday, according to CNN. Exhausted staffers who had been tasked with working additional hours with added responsibilities due to the abrupt layoffs are reportedly irate at the realization that their peers’ job loss was pointless.
“How much time/money is it going to cost to train a bunch of new people when we had already-trained people in place?” an unidentified NOAA official told CNN.
It’s not the only recent rescission of Musk’s efforts atop the federal government. The Office of Personnel Management released a memo to employees Tuesday announcing the end of Musk’s extremely controversial email initiative requiring federal employees to document their weekly accomplishments to the department.
Musk and Trump were practically inseparable until the pair fell out over Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” which included funds to undo some of DOGE’s work. The world’s richest man—and Trump’s biggest financier—accused the tax plan of being “pork-filled” while promising to torpedo Republicans’ midterm success by funding their opponents’ campaigns. (He failed to sway any Republican votes.)
In the aftermath of the bill, Trump and the tech billionaire unloaded on one another on each of their respective social media platforms, accusing each other of being unlikable, untrustworthy, and even unreal.
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