President Trump has nominated Neil Jacobs, a former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) official involved in the “Sharpiegate” episode during Trump’s first term, to lead NOAA.
Jacobs, a onetime World Meteorological Organization scientist, was first confirmed as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Environmental Observation and Prediction in 2018. He served as acting NOAA administrator from 2020 to 2021 and was nominated as the full-time administrator in 2020, but never received a full Senate vote.
In September 2019, after Trump apparently used a Sharpie to alter the path of Hurricane Dorian on a map to depict Alabama in its path, Jacobs was involved in drafting a NOAA statement backing Trump’s projection. The storm did not ultimately make landfall in Alabama.
A 2020 internal NOAA report determined Jacobs and then-NOAA communications director Julie Kay Roberts violated the agency’s scientific integrity policy by issuing the statement.
The nomination, first reported by Axios, has since been formally submitted to the Senate.
Jacobs’s nomination comes during a period of widespread uncertainty about NOAA’s future. Project 2025, the ambitious blueprint for a conservative reshaping of government compiled by the Heritage Foundation, calls for many of NOAA’s functions to be privatized or reassigned to other agencies. Trump disavowed the document on the campaign trail, but his actions since returning to the White House have drawn comparisons to its approach to the federal bureaucracy and he has nominated one of its principal authors, Russell Vought, to lead the Office of Management and Budget.
During his own confirmation hearing, Howard Lutnick, Trump’s nominee for Commerce Secretary, said he would not pursue a breakup of NOAA or a reassignment of its functions if confirmed. The Commerce Department oversees NOAA.
“I want to do it right, and right now Commerce is doing it right, so I have no interest in separating it,” Lutnick said in response to questioning from Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) last Wednesday.
