We thought we had seen it all with the astronomically stupid media takes surrounding Elon Musk and DOGE cutting up the federal government’s credit cards, but lefty magazine The New Republic just potentially one-upped them all.
“Elon Musk’s DOGE Cuts Could Kill Your Dog,” TNR staff writer Kate Aronoff grumbled in an insane March 5 screed.
Aronoff took aim at Musk’s reported cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which Aronoff railed “could have unexpectedly deadly consequences for your pets—not to mention your own health.” Aronoff was adamant that the cuts would hinder NOAA’s ability to pass information “about harmful algal growth and toxicity on to municipal water treatment plants in time for them to protect people, pets, and businesses from being poisoned.”
Uh, it’s pretty safe to assume that canines don’t exactly care about President Donald Trump and Musk slashing enormous waste in the federal government. That includes the climate change-obsessed NOAA which boasted a bloated $6.7 billion from then-President Joe Biden’s Consolidated Appropriations Act in 2024.
But what more can you expect from the unhinged Aronoff, who authored cringey lefty propaganda books like Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet — And How We Fight Back (2021) and A Planet To Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal (2019). She also was co-editor for the self-explanatory work We Own the Future: Democratic Socialism—American Style (2020). Climate Depot founder Marc Morano shredded Aronoff’s nutty take on DOGE in comments to MRC Business:
This is the same old canard we have heard for decades whenever budget cuts impact federal employees. The world will end unless ‘dedicated’ government workers do x, y, or z. There are multiple layers of scientists at all levels of government, as well as academia, corporations, and state and local organizations, to help with issues like algae blooms. Just because a federal scientist has been terminated does not mean the Western world will collapse. Stop the drama queens!
Proving Morano’s point, Aronoff cried that Musk’s reported cuts to 50 percent of NOAA’s staff and to “leases for its labs and office spaces around the country” would “endanger critical work to protect not just forecasting and water quality but fisheries, international shipping operations, tourism, and more.” Of course, Aronoff didn’t bother much with the areas where potential waste could be found and addressed.
For example, $259.3 million in obligations was earmarked in FY 2025 for NOAA’s Cooperative Institutes to supposedly “increase the effectiveness of research and develop innovative approaches to education in the environmental sciences by facilitating cooperation between government, university, and nonprofit research institutions.” In 2024, $8 million in obligations was doled out to NOAA for its education awards program, which encourages students to become just as fixated on climate change as NOAA is. “Awards may support the education of children, youth, and/or adults through informal or formal (K-16) education projects that address one or more of NOAA’s mission goals and the objectives of the NOAA Education Strategic Plan for 2021-2040,” according to SAM.gov.
Part of that “Strategic Plan” included: “Finding solutions to environmental issues like marine pollution, climate change, and habitat degradation [that] requires collaboration between NOAA, partner organizations, communities, and individuals.”
Perhaps this enormous expenditure of taxpayer dollars could be put to better use, especially given the $36.5 trillion national debt and consumers who are still fighting off the effects of exorbitantly high prices due to inflation, eh, Aronoff? Or are you just too busy playing dog whisperer?
