The cuts of about 800 probationary employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sliced deep into the agency tasked with a range of safety missions.

Why it matters: The cuts spared "only some" specialists at its National Weather Service, according to a congressional aide speaking on condition of anonymity.

• Layoffs at NOAA, a top weather and climate agency, come as climate change causes more intense and frequent weather and climate extremes.

The big picture: By last night, some Weather Service offices were already cutting back on their services.

• A bulletin from NWS headquarters announced that staffing shortages would prevent the twice-daily weather balloon launches from Kotzebue, Alaska. These provide information on upper air conditions to fine-tune computer models that help predict the weather across the U.S.
• The NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory announced its public communications would be on "indefinite hiatus" due to staffing shortages.

Among the deepest of NOAA's cuts was to the Office of Space Commerce. It licenses commercial satellites and issues warnings to satellites to prevent them from getting too close to one another in orbit, among other national security-related tasks.

• Multiple layoffs hit the NWS' Environmental Modeling Center, which is responsible for keeping computer models operating.

Zoom in: The cuts hit workers at NOAA headquarters; NOAA's satellites division; the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) in Princeton, N.J.; and divisions on the oceans side of the agency.

• GFDL and the research office at NOAA both do cutting-edge climate science work, including developing computer models to project global warming.
• Sources at NOAA who spoke on the condition of anonymity told Axios about the layoffs. A spokesperson for the NWS declined to comment on personnel matters but told Axios: "We continue to provide weather information, forecasts and warnings pursuant to our public safety mission."

Friction point: The cuts infuriated the tight-knit broader weather and climate community.

• "The mass firing of both new hires and recently promoted senior staff within NOAA, including mission-critical and life-saving roles at the National Weather Service, is profoundly alarming," said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA, in a statement posted to X.

Threat level: Tom Di Liberto, a meteorologist who was laid off from his role in NOAA Communications, told Axios that the cuts to NWS in particular will be harmful.

• "We will be less prepared for the next disaster and the disaster after that," Di Liberto said. "We're asking an already short-staffed agency to deal with increasing extremes with less people. Burnout will be real."
• About 300 members of the NWS may have been affected, one source said, about 7% of the service.

What we're watching: How the cuts — and potentially deeper staff reductions to come — affect the accuracy and timeliness of NOAA's extreme weather warnings as well as its climate products.

It'll be a long, uncertain road from today's signing of the U.S.-Ukraine minerals deal to development of resources and revenue that President Trump covets.

The big picture: The pact would create a joint reconstruction fund, partly used to reinvest in Ukrainian minerals, energy and infrastructure projects.

• Specifics of the U.S. stake and logistics remain to be ironed out.

Driving the news: Ukraine has deposits of graphite, lithium, rare earths, uranium, and more.

• The country's geological survey and resource ministry estimates, for instance, that it includes 6% of global graphite reserves.

Reality check: New projects have long, sometimes multidecade development timelines, even in countries that have not lost crucial infrastructure. Other hurdles in Ukraine include...

🗺️ Knowledge gaps. Resources estimates are incomplete and often quite old for some commodities, analysts say.

• "[T]here is very limited data on whether Ukraine's rare earth elements and other strategic materials are commercially viable to mine," Center for Strategic and International Studies scholars write in a lucid primer.

⚠️ Security risks could impede development. Private firms will likely be wary unless they're confident that risks are tolerable.

• Up to 40% of Ukraine's overall critical mineral deposits are in areas currently under Russian occupation, Benchmark Minerals Intelligence analyst George Ingall tells the WSJ.

🇨🇳 Extraction is just one piece of the puzzle. Access to raw materials doesn't fully achieve resource security goals when China still dominates processing and refining.

• "For a deal to really de-risk the US minerals supply chain, more infrastructure is likely needed to ensure that the newly acquired mineral ores don't flow toward Beijing," Reed Blakemore of the Atlantic Council's Global Energy Center said in a post.

The bottom line: The deal could improve the icy Trump-Zelensky relationship and bolster the U.S. interest in a peaceful Ukraine. But future development remains highly speculative.

This chart ☝️ is adapted from new International Energy Agency analysis of hurdles to grid buildouts needed to meet rising demand and integrate low-carbon sources.

Why it matters: Problems include permitting delays, long procurement timelines and, as you can see above, rising costs.

The big picture: Their survey of industry players cautions that cost vary a lot, but overall, "prices for cables have nearly doubled since 2019, and the price of power transformers rose by around 75%."

What's next: IEA offers many recommendations for power industry stakeholders, such as long-term agreements that provide price certainty and ways to better use existing infrastructure.

Full report

👀 This is tricky: a resolution to repeal rules that implement the IRA's methane fee on oil companies is headed to President Trump, but the fee itself remains in law.

• Catch up quick: The Senate approved the repeal yesterday after House action Wednesday.
• What's next: The obligation to impose the fee remains in law, so Republicans hope to end the IRA statutory requirement in reconciliation, Axios Pro's Nick Sobczyk reports. Unlock the whole story.

🧳 Large parts of energy and environment agencies could move outside D.C. under a White House order to move bureaus to "less costly parts of the country," E&E News reports.

⚖️ A federal judge ordered the Office of Personnel Management yesterday to revoke instructions to fire probationary government workers across several agencies, Axios' Sareen Habeshian reports.

• Why it matters: The ruling, which found that the firings were likely illegal, poses one of the largest hurdles yet to President Trump's goal of shrinking the federal workforce. Full story.

🤠 Micro-reactor startup Last Energy this morning unveiled plans to build 30 units in Texas to serve data center power needs.

• Why it matters: The company says it has taken concrete steps, obtaining a 200-acre site in Haskell County and filing a grid connection request with state power regulators.
• Reality check: A lot still must happen — on the finance and regulatory sides — for the project to come to fruition. That includes NRC permitting for their tech. The Houston Chronicle has more.

🤝 Oil and gas heavyweights Eni and Malaysia's state-owned Petronas are planning a joint venture for key assets in Indonesia and Malaysia.

• Why it matters: The companies said they're in "detailed discussions" and that the combined player would "generate substantial synergies towards becoming a major LNG player in the region." Reuters has more.

"We are long past the point of picking and choosing which solutions we use to fight climate change. We have to use it all."

The WSJ piece is a clear-eyed look at high costs and low supply that's challenging the young removal market.