During his last administration, Trump nominated Barry Myers to head NOAA. Myers lobbied for AccuWeather, attempting to prevent NOAA from publishing data that would compete with AccuWeather. He was also notable for not having a scientific background. (He ultimately withdrew.)
I don’t know if you’ve read Project 2025, but this is the current plan .. to break up NOAA and privatize and paywall weather data (sell to Accuweather)
I was probably a bit too quick on the trigger here.
Why actually shut down NOAA? Let NOAA do the heavy lifting of producing the data products - at taxpayers expense, then let Accuweather have an exclusive contract to sell that data - with private profits.
That sounds much better. So they don't necessarily want to shut down all the government departments.
Why should the government give that out to the paying public, when one of trumps friends could make a buck selling it to you?
The next obvious step is to dismantle NOAA altogether, because that could be provided by the private market.