Days before warning report, all 22 National Science Board members fired in two-sentence email
Just days before it was set to warn that the United States is losing ground to China in science and technology, every member of the National Science Board was abruptly fired via a two-sentence email from the Trump administration.
The administration has provided no explanation for purging the board, which helps steer the National Science Foundation and acts as an independent advisory body for the president and Congress on scientific and engineering issues, providing reports throughout the year. The ousters represent another severe blow to the NSF and the overall scientific enterprise in America.
Members received a two-sentence email saying that, “On behalf of President Donald J. Trump,” their positions were “terminated, effective immediately.”
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Roger Beachy, a terminated board member, told Nature he was concerned about political interference and suspected the board may have been cleared out to make way for O’Neill’s hand-picked members. The Trump administration has a track record of such moves. At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. expelled all 17 members of an influential vaccine advisory board and replaced them with allies, who are largely unqualified but share Kennedy’s anti-vaccine views. Trump also packed the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology not with leading scientists and researchers but with tech billionaires, including leaders of Meta, Google, Oracle, and Nvidia.
The report may be delayed. The message about who controls the science agenda wasn’t.