Mikhelson and that Ross "recuses himself from any matters focused of transoceanic shipping vessels, but has been generally supportive of the administration's sanctions of Russian and Venezuelan entities". Dysfunction of the Department of Commerce In July 2019, Politico reported that the Commerce Department under Ross reached "new heights of distraction"; an outside source, as well as multiple senior staffers, described Ross as "seen as kind of irrelevant" and morale at the department as "very low because there's not a lot of confidence in the secretary." Ross allegedly left his department leaderless due to the large amounts of time spent in the White House trying to win support from President Trump. Also, Ross allegedly tends to fall asleep in meetings to the extent that senior staffers have avoided putting him in critical meetings where he could fall asleep. Reports of Ross's inability to stay awake have gone back as far as May 2017, where in a meeting in Riyadh with the Arab-Islam-American Summit during President Donald Trump's speech, Ross appeared to have been completely asleep. NOAA/Hurricane Dorian controversy On September 1, 2019, President Donald Trump made the incorrect claim that Hurricane Dorian presented a major threat to Alabama; minutes later the Birmingham, Alabama, branch of the National Weather Service (NWS) (which is under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is part of the Commerce Department) reported that Alabama was not at risk. The New York Times reported that Ross had threatened, a few days late, to fire high-level NOAA staff unless the agency disavowed its contradiction of Trump's false claim, leading to a September 6 NOAA statement from an unidentified spokesperson endorsing Trump's position and declaring that the NWS Birmingham's contradiction of Trump was incorrect. The Commerce Department denied that Ross had threatened to fire "any NOAA staff over forecasting and public statements about Hurricane Dorian." Later reporting said that Ross had made the call from Greece, where he was traveling, after being told to "fix the problem" by acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, reportedly on Trump's orders. The NOAA's disavowal prompted an outcry from scientists and others, who said that the agency's failure to back its hurricane forecasters damaged its credibility. A subsequent report by the National Academy of Public Administration, commissioned by NOAA, found that NOAA's leadership violated the agency's scientific integrity policy by releasing a statement backing Trump's false statement about Hurricane Dorian's