The Trump administration fired members of the independent National Science Board that oversees the National Science Foundation, according to emails the board members said they received. The dismissals took effect immediately, board members said they were told in a message sent from the Presidential Personnel Office “on behalf of President Donald J. Trump.”
Keivan Stassun, who is affiliated with Vanderbilt University, said he was not “entirely surprised” and called the decision “enormously disappointing,” according to an email he sent to The Associated Press. He said the board’s planned in-person meeting next week and work on a report about the state of U.S. science were in motion before the firings, according to another board member’s account.
Yolanda Gil, a researcher with the Information Sciences Institute of the University of Southern California, said every member of the board’s current 22-person slate was dismissed. Gil said the board had been finalizing a report on the state of U.S. science and that the board’s planned meeting would not proceed as expected after the terminations.
The National Science Board, created in 1950, advises the president and Congress on science and engineering policy. It also approves major NSF funding awards and guides the agency’s future, The Associated Press reported. Board members who were dismissed described the change as part of broader personnel shifts affecting how the NSF operates.
Maria Cantwell, the top Democrat on the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, criticized the move in a statement. Cantwell said the administration’s action was “a dangerous attack on the institutions and expertise that drive American innovation and discovery.”
The firings come as NSF has faced political scrutiny over its budget. The Trump administration tried to cut the science foundation’s $9 billion budget by more than half last year, and Congress maintained NSF funding, but similar reductions have been raised again for the coming year, The Associated Press reported. Stassun said eliminating the advisory board structure could make it easier to carry out such cuts, warning it could “eviscerate investments in fundamental research and in the training of the next generation of scientists and engineers for our nation.”
The National Science Foundation’s physical headquarters has also changed. The AP reported that NSF’s headquarters was relocated to a smaller building after the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced last year it would move into NSF’s former base in Alexandria, Virginia.
The National Science Foundation directed a request for comment to the White House. In an emailed statement, the White House said the powers given to the National Science Board when it was created may need to be updated, and it said the science foundation’s work “continues uninterrupted.”