Trump White House Plays "Apprentice" With An Agency Responsible For Funding a Quarter of " Basic Research Conducted By the United States' Colleges and Universities."
The Trump administration has fired members of an independent board that oversees the National Science Foundation.
Members of the National Science Board received an email on Friday sent from the Presidential Personnel Office "on behalf of President Donald J. Trump" stating that their position was "terminated, effective immediately."
"I wasn't entirely surprised, to be honest," said dismissed board member Keivan Stassun in an email. Stassun, who works at Vanderbilt University, added that the decision was "enormously disappointing."
The National Science Board was created in 1950 to advise the president and Congress on science and engineering policy, approve major funding awards and guide NSF's future.
It's typically made up of 25 members appointed by the president who serve staggered, six-year terms. The fired scientists hail from academia and industry and specialize in areas including astronomy, math, chemistry and aerospace engineering.
Maria Cantwell, the top Democrat on the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, said in a statement the move was "a dangerous attack on the institutions and expertise that drive American innovation and discovery."
The Trump administration tried to cut the science foundation's $9 billion budget by more than half last year. Congress maintained NSF's funding, but a similar slash is once again on the table for the coming year.
Without an advisory board in the way this time, Stassun said, such cuts may be easier to execute.
It could "eviscerate investments in fundamental research and in the training of the next generation of scientists and engineers for our nation," Stassun said.
It's not like the NSB is new; it's been around for 75 years. As mentioned above, the membership is set up in a way to keep it (relatively) immune to the politics of the day in order to be focused on scientific and research matters.
Regardless, the decision couldn't have come at a worse time:
The firing of NSB members comes amidst other turmoil at the NSF. The Trump administration proposed two years in a row to cut the NSF budget by more than half. (Congress declined to approve that proposal for the 2026 budget.) The agency has lost more than 30% of its staff since January 2025, and in December it had to cede its headquarters to another federal agency. This year, new grants at the agency have been issued at a trickle, as the agency prepares major cuts to its divisions.
One of NSB’s key statutory roles is to approve NSF’s budget. But multiple NSB members say the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which oversees federal spending, told NSF leadership not to share details about the agency’s spending with board members.
“We were told that those plans were solely going to be with NSF leadership,” says Victor McCrary, a physical chemist at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC and terminated NSB chair. “And leadership was told not to share this with anybody else, including the board.”
That degree of political interference concerns many of the terminated members about the future of NSF. “Will we turn into an agency that is directed by the White House, or will we have an agency directed and managed by science and scientists?“ says [Washington University in St. Louis biologist Roger] Beachy.
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