The White House on Friday terminated all 24 members of the National Science Board, the independent body that oversees the National Science Foundation's roughly $9 billion annual budget, sending identical notices from the Presidential Personnel Office that offered no reason for the dismissals.
The action removes, in a single afternoon, the advisory layer Congress designed in 1950 to insulate federal basic-research priorities from any one administration. Members serve staggered six-year terms and advise both the president and Congress on the agency that has helped seed technologies from MRI imaging to mobile communications to LASIK surgery.
What the notices said
Each board member received the same one-line message, according to Business Times: "your position as a member of the National Science Board is terminated, effective immediately." Keivan Stassun, an astronomer at Vanderbilt University and a sitting member, told the outlet the emails were "boilerplate" and contained no substantive justification.
Fellow member Marvi Matos Rodriguez framed the dismissals as a structural break with the board's design. "The idea of having six-year terms is you get to do something significant, impactful and go beyond administrations," she said, according to Business Times.
The agency in the middle
The NSF, the agency the board oversees, is already operating without a permanent director and has been disbursing research grants at historically low levels with significant delays, The Verge reported. The administration has separately proposed substantial cuts to federal science spending in its pending budget.
The board does not award grants directly. It approves the foundation's strategic plan, signs off on major facility commitments and is the body Congress turns to for independent assessments of the U.S. research enterprise. With every seat vacant, those functions sit unstaffed pending presidential appointments.
Reaction on the Hill
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., the ranking Democrat on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, called the firings "the latest stupid move" by the president and said the board "is apolitical." In a longer statement carried by The Verge, Lofgren said: "It advises the president on the future of NSF. It unfortunately is no surprise a president who has attacked NSF from day one would seek to destroy the board that helps guide the Foundation."
No Republican members of the science committee had issued public statements on the action by Saturday evening.
The view not represented
The White House had not publicly explained the firings by press time, and no administration official or outside supporter of the move appeared in the body-tier reporting available for this article. The Presidential Personnel Office issued the notices without a public rationale, and the dossier reflects a single perspective on the dismissals; readers should weigh the account accordingly.
The next signal will come from the White House appointments list. Until the president names replacements and the Senate confirms them where required, the National Science Foundation's strategic oversight body has no members.