Hanna Miller focused on protecting whales
One of the NOAA people Trump abruptly fired yesterday:
Until Thursday afternoon, Hanna Miller focused on protecting whales from oil spills, ship strikes, and fishing gear.
Miller was a natural resource specialist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the science-heavy federal agency that forecasts weather, tsunamis, and hurricanes, regulates fisheries, studies the climate, and protects salmon, orcas, and other endangered species that swim.
In 2022, she helped a multiagency team make sure endangered orcas didn’t swim into the diesel fuel belching out of the sunken Aleutian Isle fishing boat off Washington’s San Juan Island. “I was on call for 42 days, tracking them every second that I was awake to make sure that they didn’t go through [the oil spill],” Miller said.
In 2023, Miller was awarded employee of the year for NOAA Fisheries in the western United States, and in March 2024, she was promoted. On Thursday afternoon, while on vacation in Hawaii, the federal biologist opened her work email on her personal phone to find she no longer had a job.
“The Agency finds that you are not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and/or skills do not fit the Agency’s current needs,” the email from Vice Admiral Nancy Hann, Deputy Under Secretary for Operations, reads.
“[I] just read it and had enough time to read it and share it with my personal email before I got locked out of my work account,” Miller said. “I was just really devastated,” she added.
Hundreds of scientists and policy specialists received similar emails on Thursday as the Trump administration began downsizing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Purely to “save” money, regardless of how useful or necessary or vital the work being canceled is. It’s about as sensible as terminating the fire department just as your house bursts into flames.
It has nothing to do with saving money. If you fired literally every federal worker, you might trim 4% off the federal budget. Furthermore, many of these jobs actually pump money back into the economy, or even, in the case of the IRS, back into the federal government itself.
This is entirely about burning everything down, because he can, because his enemies’ focus on it takes away from their ability to comment on his naked grifting, and because his master in Moscow wants him to.
That whole “knowledge skills and abilities” thing sounds like they are calling her “a mediocre DEI hire”. It would seem unlikely that fits, with her history, but who cares? She’s a woman…she’s in a protected group…therefore, she must be a “mediocre DEI hire”.
NOAA might “cost” a few billion dollars, but it undoubtedly saves many multiples of this, not to mention untold human (and non-human) lives. But claim to find immediate “savings” of any amount of money, and pulling the plug on it is fine and dandy. Maybe we have to make this blunder a bit more personal and relevant to our peenypinching oligarchs. This idiotic short-sightedness will even cost the billionaires money if they have properties or businesses in areas that encounter weather, or say, eat food that grows in places that also have weather. And what about their yachts? Calm seas aren’t guaranteed, so good luck with smooth sailing into alll those untracked hurricanes and typhoons. No matter. Rockets just fly right through all that “weather” stuff when you launch them. And land them. All you need is gumption and strength of will. The new, nostalgic era of unforeseen extreme weather events will build character. Many thousands will die, but the survivors will be stronger.
And as for Orcas, they don’t vote, so what good are they? They have no comprehension of the Greatness that is Trusk. Maybe if they were to go to the White house to grovel and kiss Trump’s ass, he might deign to offer them “protection.” They’re always dressed formally, so he can’t fault them for sloppy attire, there’s that. It’s hard for untrained observers to tell the difference between fish-eating Residents and mammal-eating Biggs Orcas; maybe the endangered Residents could prevail upon their mammal-eating cousins to go to the White House in their stead. Biggs Orcas are already among the most toxin-laden animals on Earth; saddling them with the additional poisonous load of the current occupant of the Oval Office would be doing them no favours.
My understanding, after seeing a few stories of this sort, is that all of the fired workers get that crap about knowledge, skills and abilities in their “get lost, you’re fired” letter. It’s boiler plate, basically. And probably put there for legal ass covering purposes.
“Doing your job with the ability, knowledge, and skills you have exhibited is helping to protect and secure the country and people you serve. The knowledge you create helps to guide public policy and regulation. You and your entire department are standing against the violation of the standards and safeguards you formulate, uphold, and enforce. We won’t allow this to happen. You’re fired, so fuck off; there’s money to be made”
Gotta empty out the Cathedral, then aristos can take over and then Yarvin can be grand wizard or something…