On Friday (April 24), President Donald Trump fired all 22 members of the apolitical body that advises the executive and legislative branches on the nation’s scientific enterprise and establishes the policies of the National Science Foundation. It is just the latest move of an administration that seems determined to undermine the United States’ role as a global leader in scientific research and evidence-based policymaking.
Keivan Stassun, a professor of physics and astronomy at Vanderbilt University and member of the National Science Board (NSB) since 2022, told the Los Angeles Times that the firing represents “a wholesale evisceration of American leadership in science and technology globally.”
Willie May, an analytical chemist and research administrator at Morgan State University, also decried the move. “I have watched the systematic dismantling of the scientific advisory infrastructure of this government with growing alarm,” he told The New York Times, “and the National Science Board is simply the latest casualty.”
In just over a year back in power, the Trump administration has already cancelled or delayed grant funding from federal agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And the president has proposed slashing the budgets of many of these agencies, including a cut of nearly 25 percent to the NASA budget. The position of NSF director has been vacant since April of 2025 after the resignation of Sethuraman Panchanathan.
Read more: “They Came for Climate Science. Then the Storms Came.”
“This is the latest stupid move made by a president who continues to harm science and American innovation,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, in a recent statement. “The NSB is apolitical. 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. Will the president fill the NSB with MAGA loyalists who won’t stand up to him as he hands over our leadership in science to our adversaries? A real Bozo the Clown move.”
The news of the NSB firing comes as China officially outpaces the U.S. in research spending, adjusted for purchasing power, for the first time ever. According to a late March report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, China spent $1.03 trillion on research while the U.S. spent $1.01 trillion in 2024.
“The most recent reports showing that China is now outspending the U.S. on scientific and technological research is a turning point worth understanding clearly because, historically, global leadership in one sector—including technology and warfare—feeds into others,” wrote Caroline Wagner, a public affairs professor at the Ohio State University, in The Conversation last week. “U.S. dominance is in question.”
“Under the second Trump administration, U.S. government science agencies have been slow-walking proposals for new research,” Wagner added. “Current budget cuts from the White House threaten to deepen cuts to government spending significantly.”
As the Trump administration’s actions to undercut science and research endanger innovation in the country, they also risk pushing U.S. scientists abroad. “Researchers who might once have come to American universities are finding welcoming alternatives in Europe, China, and elsewhere,” Wagner wrote.
The scientific community and the U.S. public, who have benefitted from the fruits of the country’s well-funded research enterprise for decades, are being forced to absorb this latest blow to continued progress. Recovery from this damage could take decades. 
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