By LIZZY ACKER/The Oregonian/OregonLive
When Cristen Don got word she had been laid off from her job at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Newport last week, she had an hour to clear out her desk.
“It was totally black box,” she said of the layoff.
Although Don had only been at NOAA for three months, she spent 18 years at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in its marine reserves and other programs. Still, she was on a list of probationary workers, which she was notified about four weeks ago.
For the two weeks before she was terminated, Don said, she hadn’t been able to work on a project that would take her more than a day, since there was no guarantee she would be around the next day.
Don isn’t a researcher, she said in an interview this week “but my role was to work with the leadership team on strategic planning and I was leading a process to actually improve budget planning and allocation process, so we could be more nimble and strategic when things like big budget cuts come.”
Don also supports researchers, she said, to make sure their work is aligned with national priorities and direction from Congress.
“My work was very much about making NOAA more efficient,” she said. “So, it’s a little bit ironic.”
Don is among more than 800 temporary or probationary NOAA employees across the country who were laid off last week during a purge by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, created by President Donald Trump. NOAA, in statements from various officials, offers a variation of “It is our longstanding practice not to comment on personnel issues or speculate on the impacts.”
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. said this week he had not been able to get numbers from the Trump administration about how many people had been fired.
“As it’s been with each of this administration’s chaos-inducing schemes, answers to even the most fundamental questions like how many federal employees have been illegally forced out either aren’t forthcoming or shift with the day,” Wyden said in a statement.
Those laid off include new hires with long job histories, like Don, and employees who were promoted or given permanent positions in the last year. That included NOAA’s fleet operations chief in Newport who had transferred in five months ago.
Impactful cuts
While Don could not say exactly how many people in the Newport offices lost their jobs last week, she said at least two other women in her office were packing up Thursday afternoon. The job losses cover a spectrum of NOAA Fisheries duties.
“We do all the research off of Washington, Oregon and also in Idaho to support sustainable fisheries, seafood safety, human health, such as monitoring harmful algal blooms,” Don said.
Don believes Thursday’s job cuts at Northwest Fisheries Science Center will have far-ranging impacts.
“It means not collecting the data that’s needed to understand our fish populations, which is going to affect fishery management decisions and it’s going to slow that whole process down, which will have rippling effects affecting our commercial and recreational fisheries,” she said.
But that’s just the beginning.
“We work on seafood safety to make sure seafood is healthy,” Don said. “Also, we do enforcement to make sure the seafood that’s on your plate is what it says it is.”
Illegal labeling, she said, is a real problem in the seafood industry. Without enforcement, you will be less sure about the accuracy of seafood packaging.
And then, there are the harmful algal blooms, which Northwest Fisheries Science Center monitors.
Those problems aren’t just health risks, they could harm the coastal economies, Don said.
“I’m not an expert, but I do look at a lot of economic data and work with a lot of economists and I am concerned that this will have a local impact,” she said.
But Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore. believes “It’s impossible to overstate” the impact of NOAA and its employees on the Oregon coast.
“Their expertise is not only the backbone of the state’s critical Blue Economy, but it also plays a central role in everything from tracking extreme weather that could endanger the lives, homes, and businesses of countless Oregonians, helping manage our coastal zone, and producing groundbreaking fisheries,” he said in a statement.
Don is fighting back too. About 30 minutes after receiving her termination notice she sent an email to her supervisors contesting the firing. In that email, she wrote that the justification provided for her layoff – that her “ability, knowledge, and/or skills do not fit the Agency’s current needs” – is “inconsistent with my professional background and performance’.”
“While my response wasn’t a formal appeal,” she said, “since affected employees are still working to understand what official appeal options are available – it was the best I could put together in about 15 minutes while packing up my office.”
- Lizzy Acker is a reporter at The Oregonian/OregonLive and can be reached at lacker@oregonian.com.
- This story appeared March 4, 2025 on OregonLive and is used with permission.
Under Trump the definitions of “waste and fraud” have been broadened to include professionals and experienced workers whose jobs and responsibilities are seen by Musk as worthless. His definition of worthless includes scientific research, humanitarian work, human welfare, or being of benefit to society. This is Project 2025 in action; the destruction of the US Government under the guise of cost saving. The real “waste and fraud” is the hatchet job being done with little insight, thought, or responsibility by Musk and Trump. Beware the surgeon who wants to use a chainsaw to remove a boil.
If we don’t tighten our belts now then when? Our government spending has been out of control for decades and nobody has been willing to step to the plate and handle it! Trump has been the only President in my lifetime (60yrs) to be honest with Americans during the election and say exactly what he planned to do once elected… Then actually do what he said he would. I’ve been a Democrat voter my entire life until this election. However I could not in clear conscience continue to ignore the fact that the Democrats had gone off the deep end and their platform was no longer in the best interest of all Americans. I considered voting third party very seriously. In the end I truly voted what made sense. When I listed to all of the things each candidate said I started to here Trump’s message. Then I had to honestly look at the people around him and the support the came his way from the Democratic Party Line. I could go on and on but I’m not going to waste anymore of my time. Standing with our duly elected President is the right thing to do as Americans. President Trump is the leader of our country now and standing against him is standing for The United States of America continuing to founder on the world stage. This is our opportunity as a nation to regain our dignity and respect.
News outlet reports say between 600 and 800 people have lost their jobs with NOAA which has a workforce of 13,000. If a company can’t lose 5-6% of their worksforce and still function, then they should exist. Private companies do that all the time. Time for government to suck it up and do with less.
Apparently we will be fed a steady stream of these accounts highlighting how unfair and cold hearted these layoff of Federal workers are. Strangely, when I, and hundreds of others, were laid off from an oil and gas company years ago no one noticed. It’s easy to cherry pick individual accounts of people that have been laid off that seem to suggest important positions critical to public welfare have been axed. I guess we will have to get used to hearing these stories.