All 22 members of the advisory board that advises and oversees the US National Science Foundation (NSF), a leading funder of basic science, were fired on 24 April without explanation. Each member of the NSF’s National Science Board (NSB) received an email Friday afternoon saying that “on behalf of President Donald J. Trump,” their positions were “terminated, effective immediately”.

Members of the NSB are appointed by the president and serve six year terms that are staggered, avoiding complete turnover. The White House did not immediately respond to Nature’s queries about the reason for the terminations or whether members would be replaced.

“This action to dismiss the NSB is unprecedented,” says Dan Reed, a computer scientist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and chair of the NSB from 2022–2024. “We need a vibrant, independent NSB, one representative of the broad science and engineering enterprise.”

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Zoe Lofgren, a member of the US House of Representatives from California and the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, criticized the move. “This is the latest stupid move made by a president who continues to harm science and American innovation,” she said in a statement. “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.” House science committee chairman Brian Babin, a Republican from Texas, did not respond to a request for comment.

This is not the first time the Trump administration has ousted federal science advisors en masse. Last year, the administration fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which played a critical part in US vaccine policy, and eliminated 14 advisory committees at the NSF. Also last year, Trump issued an order eliminating several advisory committees, including one on long COVID, to reduce government spending and “promote American freedom and innovation.”

Long history

The NSF and the NSB were established by Congress in 1950. The board meets five times a year and publishes reports on the state of US science and engineering that help to guide the President and Congress. Its next meeting was set for 5 May, and members say a report about the United States ceding scientific ground to China was set to be released.

“Where will advice come from?” asks Roger Beachy, a biologist at Washington University in St. Louis, in Missouri. He was appointed to the NSB by US President Barack Obama in 2014 and reappointed by Trump in 2020 before being terminated on Friday. “Who will help with what is the future of science in this nation?”

Keivan Stassun, an astrophysicist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, says the termination of NSB members fits into a pattern of the Trump administration’s approach to science advice, which is being “systematically either dissolved or eviscerated,” he says. “It felt like only a matter of time” before that happened to NSB, he says.

Because NSB was established by an act of Congress, the board can officially be dissolved only by Congress. Additionally, its members are required to be ‘eminent’ in scientific fields, according to the founding legislation.

Tumultuous times

The firing of NSB members comes amidst other turmoil at the NSF. The Trump administration proposed two years in a row to cut the NSF budget by more than half. (Congress declined to approve that proposal for the 2026 budget.) The agency has lost more than 30% of its staff since January 2025, and in December it had to cede its headquarters to another federal agency. This year, new grants at the agency have been issued at a trickle, as the agency prepares major cuts to its divisions.

One of NSB’s key statutory roles is to approve NSF’s budget. But multiple NSB members say the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which oversees federal spending, told NSF leadership not to share details about the agency’s spending with board members.

“We were told that those plans were solely going to be with NSF leadership,” says Victor McCrary, a physical chemist at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC and terminated NSB chair. “And leadership was told not to share this with anybody else, including the board.”

That degree of political interference concerns many of the terminated members about the future of NSF. “Will we turn into an agency that is directed by the White House, or will we have an agency directed and managed by science and scientists?“ says Beachy.

Some of the dismissed NSB members have theories about the reason for the board’s termination. Beachy suspects they were ousted to make way for a new council of advisers for Jim O’Neill, a biotech investor nominated to be the next NSF director. Stassun says they might have been removed to prevent them from lobbying Congress to preserve NSF’s budget for fiscal year 2027.

On social media, scientists shared their concerns about the termination of NSB members, but some also criticized the board for not protesting more forcefully as the NSF was targeted by the Trump administration. McCrary points to the board’s work in lobbying for the NSF. “We went to Congress, we went to industry, went to every sector, and got people and rallied people around to support the foundation,” he says.

Marvi Matos Rodriguez, a terminated NSB member and chemical engineer in the fusion industry based in Seattle, Washington, says she respects her colleagues on NSB but agrees with the criticism. “I think that the scientific community and NSF employees and people who wanted the board to speak up were right,” she says. “We should have been speaking up all along.”

This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on April 26, 2026.