President Trump sent a tweet.

Yes, that's how many of these can he do that episodes could begin, but this time that

tweet led to a series of events that nearly two weeks later is still unfolding.

And that single tweet poses larger questions for the country that might not be initially

obvious.

The message was an incorrect claim from the president that Hurricane Dorian would hit

Alabama.

Soon after, the Birmingham Weather Forecast Office sent a tweet to Quelle Fierce reassuring

the community that Alabama was not in fact an expected path of the hurricane.

That contradictory tweet from Birmingham's Weather Service outpost did not sit well with

Trump.

According to Washington Post reporting, he complained about it for days and ultimately asked

his staff to fix it, to counter a tweet that was accurate to the forecast at the time,

seemingly because it contradicted his own inaccurate one.

And so a scientific government agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,

or NOAA, issued a statement essentially siding with Trump over its own scientists.

A doctored weather map, a sharpie, were also involved, but we'll get to that later.

These events culminating in a president pressuring a government agency to issue a statement

in support of his own false claim raises serious questions about presidential power.

What happens when our president politicizes scientific institutions?

Are there safeguards to protect government employees who feel caught between scientific

ethics and directives from leadership?

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