The Trump administration’s sudden firing of all 22 members of the US National Science Foundation’s (NSF) governing board has caused uproar in the US research community. The National Science Board (NSB) is responsible for guiding the NSF in promoting research and education in science and engineering. The move leaves the country’s largest funder of chemistry without a board or a director.
Board members received a boilerplate email from the White House Presidential Personnel Office on 24 April informing them that their service as NSB members was terminated, effective immediately. Former board member and analytical chemist Willie May says the message offered no explanation and was simply ‘a pro forma thank-you-for-your service’ and ‘immediate termination’ notice. The board had 24 members but two of them had already stepped down and were not replaced.
‘I am deeply disappointed, though I cannot say I am entirely surprised,’ says May, who is also a recent past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. ‘I have watched the systematic dismantling of the scientific advisory infrastructure of this government with growing alarm, and the National Science Board is simply the latest casualty.’
He notes that the NSB was established in 1950 to provide independent oversight of the NSF – an agency that currently invests nearly $9 billion (£7.68 billion) annually in basic research. The NSB’s members are appointed to six-year terms to ensure continuity and a certain amount of insulation from political winds.
‘That structure was intentional – science does not operate on four-year cycles,’ May explains. ‘The work of understanding our universe, solving complex problems and building the knowledge base for the technologies of tomorrow requires patient, sustained investment guided by rigorous scientific judgment – not political preference.’
But he expresses hope that Congress will challenge these dismissals. Neal Lane, a physicist who served as science adviser to former president Bill Clinton and previously as director of the NSF, is also urging Congress to stop what he calls the administration’s attacks on science and help rebuild the NSF and other federal research agencies that have been targeted during Trump’s second term.
An ‘unprecedented’ event
‘Firing all 24 members at once is unprecedented in NSF’s seven-year history,’ Lane asserts. ‘Coming on top of large staff reductions, attempts to cut the budget by over 50%, politicise the peer review process and kick the staff out of the building, firing the board looks like another effort to erase NSF’s independence or, perhaps the agency itself.’
Physical chemist Richard Zare from Stanford University, who was appointed to the NSB under President George H W Bush in 1992, is extremely concerned about these latest developments. ‘I am deeply dismayed at the removal of the present members of the National Science Board,’ says Zare, who chaired the NSB from 1994 to 1996. ‘I fear that this action, along with the proposed steep cuts in the budget of the NSF, will cause the US to lose its global leadership role in science, discovery and innovation.’
President Trump’s budget request for 2026, released last year, proposed slashing the NSF’s funding by 55%. However, Congress headed off the worst of these cuts and the agency’s budget fell by only 3%. But earlier this month, the administration proposed another 55% budget cut for the NSF for financial year 2027.
Meanwhile, the agency hasn’t had a permanent director for over a year, ever since its former head Sethuraman Panchanathan suddenly resigned in April 2025. President Trump has nominated science and technology investor Jim O’Neill as the NSF’s new director, but he has not yet been confirmed by the Senate.
‘Mostly flying blind’
‘Without a board or permanent director, the NSF is in a tough spot,’ states Roger Beachy, a professor emeritus of biology at Washington University in St. Louis who is one of the recently dismissed NSB members. ‘It is more rudderless now than it ever was in the past.’
There are significant questions about how decisions will now be made at the agency. ‘A number of people have left NSF who are very capable,’ Zare says. ‘I’m very worried that emphasis will be placed on very limited goals … I am worried about what will happen to fundamental and exploratory research at the NSF.’
Jeremy Berg, a biochemist who served as director of the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences for almost eight years, says he believes these firings are ‘an unprecedented … disruption of American science’. He notes that the board is constructed to provide long-term guidance for the NSF and cautions about ‘the loss of institutional knowledge about ongoing programmes and important insights about the future’.
Berg says the NSB’s role is purely advisory, unlike the NIH advisory councils that provide final approvals on research grants. Therefore, he suggests that its normal activities can continue but warns that the agency will be ‘mostly flying blind’.
The presidents of academic research advocacy organisations like the Association of American Universities and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities also issued strongly-worded statements condemning the terminations.
The board’s next meeting was scheduled for 5 May. An official with the board’s office tells Chemistry World that it is unclear whether the 5 May meeting is cancelled and they are awaiting final word.
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