Ranking Members Lofgren and Amo Demand Answers After GAO Report Reveals Trump-Inflicted Damage to America’s Future Weather Satellites

October 19, 2026 Press Release (Washington, DC) – Today, Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Environment Subcommittee Ranking Member Gabe Amo (D-RI) sent a letter to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Administrator Neil Jacobs regarding NOAA’s GeoXO satellite program. GeoXO is the future fleet of the nation’s weather satellites scheduled to replace the current satellites in the 2030’s and collect life-saving data to support weather forecasting. In early 2025, the Trump administration demanded that NOAA cut the GeoXO program by 50% and exclusively focus on the Agency’s “weather data needs,” disguising blatant climate denialism as an effort to cut costs. GAO released its report on Friday, October 16, 2026 , and found that the Trump administration’s actions “put vital observations at risk.” “Two fewer satellites and three fewer scientific instruments are not line items in a budget,” Ranking Members Lofgren and Amo write in their letter . “They represent a concrete, tangible weakening of America’s ability to understand the weather, the climate, and the world around us.” The Members continue: “We now confront the real possibility that America’s next generation of weather satellites will be no better – or even worse – than the generation in orbit today. As GAO concludes in its report, ‘it is unclear whether GeoXO will improve, or even continue, the functionality available in the current generation of satellites.’ That is an unacceptable notion, and we are determined to return this program to its proper path." In closing, the Members focus in on the hypocrisy of the administration’s claims that these cancellations are to save costs, pointing to the war in Iran: “In exchange for a less advanced, less capable next generation of weather satellites, the only meager rationale the Trump Administration can muster is $6.6 billion in reduced lifecycle costs. At a time when the war in Iran has cost the country an estimated $38 billion and counting while President Trump proposes to spend another $1.2 trillion on checks intended to lessen the political fallout of that war, it is hard to think of a more foolish, self-defeating way to save money than by stripping capabilities from a weather satellite program of vital long-term national significance. The Trump Administration has the wrong priorities, but NOAA must get GeoXO right. We expect nothing less.” Read the letter here. Find the GAO report here. Issues : Innovation and Technology