‘Sharpiegate’ twist: Donald Trump’s commerce secretary faces calls to resign

US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross faced calls for his resignation after it was reported that he had threatened to fire senior staff at a federal agency unless they sided publicly with Donald Trump in the rumbling dispute dubbed “Sharpiegate”.

The New York Times, citing three anonymous officials, reported that Ross had called Neil Jacobs, the acting administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), last Friday and warned that heads would roll unless the agency’s disagreement with the US president over the path of Hurricane Dorian was smoothed over.

Earlier in the week, the agency’s Birmingham, Alabama, office incurred Trump’s wrath by publicly repudiating the president’s false claim that Alabama was at risk from a devastating hurricane. By that point Alabama in fact lay outside the storm’s likely trajectory.

In a desperate effort to bolster Trump’s inaccurate statement, a map of the hurricane’s “cone of uncertainty” was presented in the Oval Office that had been altered by Sharpie pen to extend the area of danger over a corner of Alabama.

Hours after Ross’s intervention, the NOAA put out an extraordinary official statement that sided with Trump and admonished its own Birmingham office.

The news that a cabinet member in the Trump administration had threatened to fire politically-appointed staff at the agency to force the NOAA to contradict the advice of its own scientists prompted immediate condemnation.