Hundreds of protesters gathered in Boulder Monday to protest mass layoffs at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other federal agencies.
The thick crowd spilled into grassy lawns at the perimeter of the David Skaggs Research Center, which houses NOAA facilities that research extreme space weather, air quality, drought and more. Throngs of people lined the road outside of the campus, eliciting drawn-out honks from tractor trailers and cheers in response. Chants of “Elon Musk has got to go” broke out regularly. At one point a saxophonist played “When the Saints Come Marching In” while weaving through the crowd.
Last week, the Trump administration fired hundreds of NOAA employees as part of a Elon Musk-led cost-cutting effort funneled through the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE.
NOAA, situated under the Commerce Department, is instrumental in climate research and houses the National Weather Service, which provides detailed forecasts and weather modeling. In Colorado, NOAA maintains laboratories in Boulder, while the National Weather service has forecasting offices covering Boulder, Grand Junction and Pueblo.
The extent of the layoffs in Colorado is still unclear, though they affected Boulder’s Space Weather Prediction Center, which monitors the sun to provide forecasts and warnings about incoming electromagnetic storms. Those events can cause widespread disruptions to the power grid, expose airline passengers to unsafe radiation levels and cause GPS systems to fail.
At the protest, critics accused the administration of irresponsibly cutting positions that are vital to scientific research and national security.
“We feel the loss here at NOAA because it affects us personally, our friends and our neighbors,” said former congressman David Skaggs, who helped appropriate the money to build the Boulder facility. “Of course we know this is just the Boulder example of the mindless culling of civil servants whose work is little understood by Musk or the President.”
Skaggs said he wept in church on Sunday because the mass layoffs were “overwhelmingly sad and distressing.” He thought the protest provided a forum for Coloradans to express displeasure at other policy choices during the first 100 days of the Trump administration.
“ I'm not at all surprised that there are other things motivating people here, other than just NOAA,” Skaggs told CPR News. He said that President Trump’s Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was likely also a factor.
“I thought to myself, that's probably going to send some more people to our demonstration on Monday.”
Several attendees held signs proclaiming their support for Ukraine or decrying large corporate tax cuts. Some expressed alarm at how important services provided by the government for the public good seemed to be cut indiscriminately. Prairie Summer worked at USAID as a contractor for nearly a decade before being terminated in February, in a wave of layoffs which have functionally gutted the agency.
“USAID is just the canary in the coal mine,” Summer said. “We’re seeing them test there what they’re rolling out everywhere, and it’s such an overstep of congressional authority.”
“These public goods are really important. And it's really important that we all stick up for it before it's too late,” she said.
Carol Knight, a former Boulder NOAA outreach and communication employee, said the agency’s work was transformative to the American economy and regularly saved lives, such as during a tornado outbreak in Oklahoma City.
“ The labs here in Boulder developed a model that can show conditions that are ripe for tornado formation,” Knight said. “People had hours to prepare because the conditions were ripe and our model was the one that saved lives that day.”
The National Institute of Standards and Technology also has an office on Boulder’s campus. Dick Harris, a former NIST division chief, said he is concerned about the ability of both NOAA and NIST to continue doing cutting-edge research if they’re hollowed out.
“I worry terribly about what happens to the quality people who used to work together to do fantastic science here,” Harris said. “And I'm afraid that'll go away.”
Kristen Bathmann, a former NOAA scientist who sported a sign that read “Good Luck DOGEing Hurricanes,” said the cuts motivated her to attend the protest and offer support to fired employees.
“They don’t deserve any of this," Bathmann said. “It’s breaking my heart.”
“I don’t want to just sit around and watch everything burn down.”
