Trump fires the entire governing board of the National Science Foundation
In a move that should surprise no one at this point in Trump’s second term, yesterday President Trump informed all 24 members of the National Science Board, the committee that runs the National Science Foundation (NSF), that they have been fired.
“On behalf of President Donald J Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as a member of the National Science Board is terminated, effective immediately,” reads a 24 April email from Mary Sprowls of the presidential personnel office to each NSB member. “Thank you for your service.”
The article at the link, from the journal Science, takes the typical one-sided propaganda press anti-Trump view, interviewing only those who oppose Trump and spending most of its time screaming “He’s destroying science!”
A wider view would ask this: Is there a reason that the president of the United States, elected by the American people, might have reasons to question the management of this board? At the moment the federal government is running a deficit that is back-breaking, and this board publicly criticized Trump’s effort to rein in spending when he proposed a 55% cut in NSF’s budget. If they are not going to cooperate with their boss, then maybe they should leave, and not let the door hit them as they head out.
The Science article also included this howler: “the mass firing is the latest indication that the White House is ignoring the board’s authority and dictating policies at NSF.” Um, who elected them? No one. In fact, they were appointed by the president himself, and he is the only one with the constitutional authority to decide these matters.
Expect court suits of course, with some lower level unelected judge somewhere attempting to take over running the executive branch by demanding these board members remain in power, defying the elected president of the U.S.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
In a move that should surprise no one at this point in Trump’s second term, yesterday President Trump informed all 24 members of the National Science Board, the committee that runs the National Science Foundation (NSF), that they have been fired.
“On behalf of President Donald J Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as a member of the National Science Board is terminated, effective immediately,” reads a 24 April email from Mary Sprowls of the presidential personnel office to each NSB member. “Thank you for your service.”
The article at the link, from the journal Science, takes the typical one-sided propaganda press anti-Trump view, interviewing only those who oppose Trump and spending most of its time screaming “He’s destroying science!”
A wider view would ask this: Is there a reason that the president of the United States, elected by the American people, might have reasons to question the management of this board? At the moment the federal government is running a deficit that is back-breaking, and this board publicly criticized Trump’s effort to rein in spending when he proposed a 55% cut in NSF’s budget. If they are not going to cooperate with their boss, then maybe they should leave, and not let the door hit them as they head out.
The Science article also included this howler: “the mass firing is the latest indication that the White House is ignoring the board’s authority and dictating policies at NSF.” Um, who elected them? No one. In fact, they were appointed by the president himself, and he is the only one with the constitutional authority to decide these matters.
Expect court suits of course, with some lower level unelected judge somewhere attempting to take over running the executive branch by demanding these board members remain in power, defying the elected president of the U.S.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
That “Science” should make such a comment comes as no surprise to me. I took out membership in the AAAS soon after I received my B. Sc. in the late 1970s. I remained a member until a few years ago when I decided not to renew.
The reason for my decision was simple. The AAAS had progressively become woke to the point that “Science” had become unreadable. Starting with Trump’s elections, its editorials were nothing but diatribes against him and nothing he did was ever right or acceptable.
I joined the AAAS because it was a top-tier scientific organization and I was proud to do so. By the time I let my membership lapse, it had become a clown show.
Charlie Camarda reaction: “NSF needs a shakeup!”
https://x.com/i/status/2048520330876956760
No Worries!
I’m sure that all 24 members of the National Science Board will find meaningful, productive positions in the private, results oriented sector.
PS – Do I really need to put the /s?
There are multiple ways in which a scientific organization can be corrupted. Becoming the plaything of an autocrat is one of them, and we have, alas, plenty of examples of that in the history of the Second and Third World nations over the last century.
But it turns out that the First World has found its own way of corrupting its elite science institutions, too. Consider this example, uncovered by Christopher Rufo last year: “The National Science Foundation is spending $1.5 million on “Black Feminist Epistemologies: Building a Sisterhood in Computing.” That went to Florida State University and it’s still active. It also seems to be impossible to determine how any of that grant is being spent. And if you think this grant was the only such thing of this sort that the NSF has been handing out, well……
Is the NSF yet another elite credentialed institution that’s been hollowed out, ideologically colonized and worn like a skinsuit? Well, I think it might be telling to look not just at the kinds of things it funds, but who runs it. The majority of the 24 NSF members are administrators or emeritus faculty. (This includes the vice provost of the university I graduated from and worked for, by the way — he is cited making an angry denunciation of this move in the article.) How many are currently doing hard, meaningful science research right now? It was not always so.
I have my doubts that the Trump Administration can remake the NSF into an institution capable of fulfilling its original charter once again. What I doubt even more is that the leadership just sacked had any chance of doing so.
He should have waited until after midterms
Trump on all levels is the cleansing force that the stagnant U.S. necrotic and corrupted system needs. It must be dragged back to its foundation.
And there is no more needy bureaucracy than the United States government that can benefit from his service.
True leadership, as chaotic as it may seem and be at times is so unfamiliar to the system and those who inhabit it must resist it because it represents a real threat to their fiefdoms.
And that is how true change and progress is made, that is AMERICA!
All the Founders geniuses all knew and experienced it, every mold breaker seat of the pants leader knows it, and we all benefit from it.
This is OUR system; this is OUR process.
NO APOLOGIES!
Where’s ‘Hanoi’ Jane Fonda?
Ho, ho
Hey, hey
How Many people
Did you fire today?
Excellent move. “Science” in this country has been politicized to a preposterous extent and also turned into a veritable playground for grifters with advanced degrees. The top priority of the new NSF governing board should be to ruthlessly root out politicized “science” and scientific fraud and malpractice including a ruthless pruning and leadership overhaul of scientific journals and of the entire peer-review process.
To Blair
No one can rhyme for anything (save Etrigan)
Even graffiti isn’t as good.
More my style
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FkQtdiIAU8I
I’m a chemist, both academic and industrial, at levels from bottle washer to vp. Unlike most, I’ve published in “Science”. At the time, that was a coup. “Science” was one of the two hardest places to get accepted (NEJM was the other; I’m in there, too). Way harder than any ACS journal. Point is, I’ve been there, done that, and played the game.
I’m thoroughly disgusted by what our national science leadership (at both NSF and NIH) and science journals have become, particularly in the last 25 years. Even in the hard sciences (or, ‘actual sciences’) the damage is deep and stunning. NSF and NIH leadership must bear a significant amount of the blame.
As nearly everyone here has noted, “Science” got more and more woke and left wing, eventually becoming both unreadable and irrelevant (there was still good, actual science there, but the editorial slant and selection bias was overwhelmingly left). I resigned in 2005 after being an AAAS member for nearly 40 years. I could no longer stand, or support, the credulous promotion of nonsense like ‘climate science’, warming, or the idiotic inability to do basic math. Phil Abelson would have been appalled.
The same is true at nearly every other society and professional association, including the honoraries like Sigma Xi.
Trump has it right. Time to clean out the stables.
Retired science teacher. I am a member of The American Association of Physics Teachers, and, even in that discipline, there are far too many who reflexively follow the Leftist drift of American Science.
I’ve taken two graduate classes in climate science. One by the OAS, one by MIT.
Although in both I learned a great deal of worthwhile content, I was unconvinced by the conclusions. The stretch between available knowledge and definitive conclusions was too great.
It amounted to what Sarah Hoyt calls “handwavium” in science fiction. Kind of a magical explanation.
When I was a new PhD I tried to get finding from the NSF. After several tries I gave up. Years later the chairman of a science department told me that the NSF was really a bunch of clubs. If you weren’t a member of one you’d never get funded. If you were, you could submit a restaurant menu and get a grant.
Later on I worked on very big project that was to be funded by the NSF. Our director was always frustrated dealing with management over there. He called it the National Anti Science Foundation.
Hair (1968)
“The Initial Song”
https://youtu.be/j1zy9MW8CkA
(0:57)
“LBJ took the IRT,
Down to 4th Street USA.
When he got there,
What did he see?
The youth of America on LSD…”
Further to my earlier comments, when I first joined the AAAS, Carter was President and Philip Abelson was the editor. I let my membership lapse shortly after Biden took office.
That time period included several U. S. Presidents and a number of different “Science” editors. For most of it, the atmosphere was one of cordiality and respect, regardless of whatever political decisions were made or which policies were in effect.
But, then, Trump did the unexpected and was elected in 2016. That’s when things started falling apart and the editorial page of “Science” became an outlet for vitriolic attacks. As doc mentioned earlier, Abelson would not have been pleased.
Paul in Boston:
We have an organization similar to the NSF here in Canada, the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council.
Like in the U. S., it seems that one can’t get a faculty position without government funding. I know of at least one grad school colleague who got a tenure-track university position after receiving an NSERC grant.
The Science is going to be really mad.
The NSF represents science the same way the ABA represents practicing lawyers or the AMA represents practicing medical doctors. In other words, poorly. (Less than 10% of practicing lawyers belong to the ABA! About 15% of practicing medical doctors belong to the AMA! They all have gotten sick of the political posturing.) It’s a liberal club of woke nonsense practitioners who know whose bread is being buttered.
Its primary function is to dole out tax dollars to their friends and colleagues and anyone with political connections. There’s no accountability that the money isn’t being wasted, let alone well spent.
Maybe Elon could write some AI to nix any SJW nonsense out
https://techxplore.com/news/2026-04-agentic-ai-threatens-funding.html
Venture Capitalists only want to fund “winners” and lefties hate anything to do with hydrocarbons, so we need to put engineers into the funding loop who will actually say yes to their own kind.
The Science is going to be really mad.
Don’t worry, it will be settled soon enough.
see
Great summary of a complex political move. Does the president have the full legal authority to fire the entire board at once, or is there a statutory requirement for staggered terms that might lead to a legal challenge? This could set a massive precedent for other independent agencies