Hundreds of federal employees, scientists and community members gathered Monday at Boulder’s U.S. Department of Commerce campus, where the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is housed, to protest mass layoffs at NOAA and other federal agencies amid Trump administration funding cuts.
Protestors lined the streets holding signs with slogans like “Stand up for science,” “NOAA saves lives” and “Science makes America great.” Chants of “Hey hey! Ho ho! Research makes our country go!” filled the air with the honks of cars driving by.
NOAA, which also houses the National Weather Service, provides climate data, severe storm warnings, weather forecasts and a vast range of technology and research to help “understand and predict changes in climate, weather, ocean, and coasts,” according to the agency’s website.
The protest was organized by former Congressman David Skaggs, for whom the 405,000-square-foot NIST (National Institutes of Standards and Technology) and NOAA building is named. Skaggs said he feared the nation was “at a moment of profound reckoning.”
“We feel the loss here at NOAA, because it affects us personally, our friends and our neighbors,” he said. “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.
“Today, we stand with NOAA and the National Weather Service, but we also stand with public servants all across the country, the Forest Service, the Postal Service, and yes, even the Internal Revenue Service. Why do you think service is in the name of all these agencies? Because they serve us.”
As many as 1,830 probationary employees were set for layoffs last week — more than 10% of the agency’s total staff, The Hill reported. It’s not yet clear how many workers in the Boulder office were impacted.
“I'm outraged by the inefficient, harmful NOAA layoff,” said Ernie Hildner, former director of NOAA’s Space Environment Center. “If reductions were needed, and I don't think they were, a slow, thoughtful, scalpel approach would have been far better than the sudden sledgehammer firing of a whole class of employees, regardless of their contributions or quality of performance.”
Lindsey Larvik, a protestor who worked in IT at NOAA for just shy of two years, received the email in the middle of a meeting and was given one hour to leave the building.
“It was pretty terrible. I was obviously upset,” Larvik said. “There was another person who was also probationary. He was also upset. We just kind of left and took a couple minutes to gather our things, say any goodbyes that we could in the time, turn everything in and leave.”
Larvik said at the protest it was “heartwarming to see all of these people come out and fight for the rights of regular federal employees.”
“It's also really important to recognize that I'm not going to be the last firing that's going to happen,” she said. “They've already let go of a number of people. It's going to continue, and so we need to keep on speaking up and speaking out about what's going on to try to minimize whatever damage we can.”
Neesha Schnepf, a research geophysicist, was fired from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) on Valentine’s Day over a video call with their supervisor, who looked like she was “trying not to cry.”
“She was like, ‘If it was up to anyone in the center, you would not be getting fired. It's gonna say it's because of a performance, but no one here thinks your performance is poor.’”
Schnepf had worked at USGS since July 2024 and previously worked at NOAA.
“It just feels really tragic,” they said “It's just so much more destructive, so much more quickly than I was prepared for. It just feels like the damage that's happening, it's gonna be really hard to repair.”
Now, Schnepf is working at CU’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.
“People are getting fired from government labs; that's the first thing that's happening. But morale is not that much higher at universities either,” they said. “If these agencies aren't able to operate and fund as Congress has allotted them and expects them to, we're gonna just see permanent damage to our education and science infrastructure. “
John Tayer, president of the Boulder Chamber of Commerce, said Boulder is home to 17 federal laboratories and 3,600 employees “who live in our communities, shop in our businesses establishments, and generally contribute to the intellectual heft that characterizes Boulder’s innovation economy.”
“While I protest the short-sighted evisceration of government investment in our collective national economic vitality, let's be clear what it is that brings us together,” he said. “We are here because our federal laboratories, our federal scientists and their dedicated support teams have accomplished so much for our economy and humanity, and all of that is worthy of our celebration, and all of that is worthy of saving for today and tomorrow.”
Congressman Joe Neguse prepared a statement that was read by Skaggs.
“These reckless mass terminations and the administration's unilateral gutting of federal agencies are already causing deep harm to our country and to communities right here in Colorado,” the statement said. “These actions threaten vital scientific programs and groundbreaking research and will undoubtedly have disastrous ramifications for the scientists and experts working right here in our very own backyard to ensure accurate forecasting, issue severe weather alerts and provide the community with emergency information.”
A Feb. 28 letter from Neguse and Colorado Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper also called on the Deputy Inspector General to investigate “the dismantling” of the agency, calling NOAA “essential to understanding and mitigating the risks to people, livelihoods, and communities that stem from complex environmental stresses, such as drought” and wildfires.