The Trump administration has dismissed all 22 members of the National Science Board, the independent body that oversees the National Science Foundation (NSF), in what critics are calling a significant blow to American scientific research. Members received an email from the Presidential Personnel Office, sent "on behalf of President Donald J. Trump", informing them their positions were "terminated, effective immediately." The White House, in a brief statement, suggested that the powers granted to the board when it was created may need to be updated, and asserted that the NSF's work "continues uninterrupted."

The National Science Board was established in 1950 — shortly after the Second World War — to advise the president and Congress on science and engineering policy, approve major funding awards, and set the strategic direction of the NSF. The foundation, with an annual budget of approximately $9 billion, is one of the United States' primary public research funders; up to 274 Nobel Prize winners have received NSF support, including five from the most recent cohort of laureates. The board's 22 fired members, drawn from academia and industry and specialising in fields from astronomy and chemistry to aerospace engineering, had been due to meet in person the following week and were finalising a report on the state of US science.

Dismissed board member Keivan Stassun, of Vanderbilt University, said he was not entirely surprised but found the decision "enormously disappointing." Fellow terminated member Yolanda Gil, of the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute, described the move as "one more indication of the sweeping changes that the administration has in mind for the NSF." Some board members had previously reported being shut out of the 2027 budget process entirely. Senator Maria Cantwell, the senior Democrat on the Senate commerce and science committee, called the firings "a dangerous attack on the institutions and expertise that drive American innovation and discovery."

The dismissals fit into a broader pattern. The Trump administration sought to cut the NSF's budget by more than half last year — a level of reduction not seen since the Second World War — though Congress rejected the proposal. A near-identical cut is again being sought for the coming year. With the oversight board now gone, observers warn those cuts may face less institutional resistance. The NSF has already lost roughly 30% of its workforce, and the administration is reportedly considering Jim O'Neill, a financial investor and humanities graduate with no scientific background, as the foundation's new director — a nomination requiring Senate confirmation that has raised concern among researchers.

The board's dissolution follows other recent moves against scientific advisory structures, including the 2025 dismissal of the 17-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and the elimination of 14 NSF advisory committees. Critics argue these actions, taken together, risk dismantling the infrastructure underpinning US leadership in science and technology — a leadership embodied in innovations from mobile phones and MRI scanners to artificial intelligence and gene editing, all developed with NSF support.