A now-fired “public affairs specialist” who created a multimillion-dollar cartoon for his agency is now warning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) budget cuts could weaken disaster preparedness.
Tom Di Liberto, the ousted employee, called his termination from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) “ridiculous” in a Monday interview with CNN’s John Berman, adding that he expects DOGE’s reductions to hinder hurricane and disaster readiness. Di Liberto was the creator and star of “Teek and Tom Explore Planet Earth,” an animated series produced by NOAA at a cost exceeding $3 million, according to federal spending records.
“I got a boilerplate email about 3:45 p.m. that kind of followed the [Office of Personnel Management] directives that said that I’m a probationary employee, so I could be assessed, and that my skills and abilities no longer met the agency’s needs — which is ridiculous,” he said. “A ton of people got fired — that’s basically going to lead to a short-staffed agency that was already short-staffed, now trying to do more with less. And that is just asking for a disaster to happen.”
The five-part series, intended to educate children about Earth’s weather and climate, stars Di Liberto as himself alongside Teek, an apparently androgynous, cyclopean extraterrestrial from the planet “Queloz.” Teek is addressed using they/them or “gender-neutral” pronouns in transcripts provided on NOAA’s website. The series’ most popular installment, “Episode 4: An Ocean of Data From Cool Technology,” has amassed over 150 views on YouTube as of Monday.
The agency’s layoffs affected 880 NOAA employees as President Donald Trump continues his broader purge of federal probationary workers, CBS News reported Friday. About 5% of the agency’s staff was fired in the first round of cuts, while individuals deemed critical to NOAA’s functioning — namely National Weather Service meteorologists — were largely spared.
“Well, I’m going to a protest later today. I’m gonna keep speaking out about the importance of NOAA. I’m going to represent those who were fired and also the amazing people who are still left at NOAA,” Di Liberto said. “I’m gonna keep looking for jobs, uh, as it relates to communication, about weather and climate. It’s what I love to do, and I’d like to keep doing that.”
Di Liberto is “#OpenToWork,” according to a border surrounding his LinkedIn profile picture. He graduated from Cornell University in 2006 and later worked as a Maryland-based meteorologist before creating “Teek and Tom” for NOAA.
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