The National Science Foundation went beyond the staff cuts demanded by the Trump administration in a move that set off a frenzied backlash at the science funding agency.
NSF fired about 10 percent of its staff at the end of Tuesday, removing 168 people who included most of the agency’s probationary employees and all of its experts, a class of contract workers who are specialists in niche scientific fields.
The agency didn’t have to fire its experts but decided to in the interest of fairness, a top NSF official told staffers in an emotionally charged hybrid meeting Tuesday morning at its Alexandria, Virginia, headquarters.
“The removal of experts was completely at the agency’s discretion. Because if we’re asked to remove probationers, then we also need to remove at-will employees,” Micah Cheatham, NSF’s chief management officer, said at the meeting, according to a transcript obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News.
“This is the first of many forthcoming workforce reductions,” he added.
NSF was created by Congress in 1950 to ensure U.S. leadership in science and engineering. The agency now provides roughly a quarter of federal support to America’s colleges and universities for basic research.
E&E News previously reported that NSF expects to cut up to half of its 1,500-person workforce. Scientists and Democratic lawmakers fear that staff losses of that scale could effectively break the nation’s research and innovation pipeline, with disastrous consequences for the U.S. economy and American citizens.
The mass firing at one of the nation’s leading funders of scientific research comes as Elon Musk, the head of the Department of Government Efficiency established by President Donald Trump, races to slash federal spending with the help of the Office of Personnel Management. Musk’s group has initially targeted foreign aid and racial diversity efforts, but nearly all agencies have been impacted by cuts, or expect them to come soon.
A few probationary employees whose work NSF leaders determined was essential were spared from the firings.
“We asked who was mission critical and more than half of people were identified,” Cheatham said. “That was too many.”
Fired NSF staffers were instructed to stop working by 1 p.m. Tuesday, at which point they would be locked out of the agency’s computer network. They had until the end of the day to clean out their desks.
To avoid having the stain of a firing on their resumes, staffers were told they could resign. But then they would not be eligible for unemployment payments.
The announcement prompted outrage, confusion and concern from people at the meeting, resulting in a string of scathing all-staff emails from impacted workers.
“You are presenting us as trophies in front of OPM,” one angry employee said in the meeting, referring to the Office of Personnel Management, according to the transcript. “I don’t want to hear anything about how you are sad, how you feel bad for everyone who’s losing their job today.”
“You screwed people, hardworking people, who trusted the word of this agency, left their careers, wherever they came from,” they added. “That’s on all of you. Take some accountability.”
An NSF official apologized to the fired workers, noting that they were “following orders” from the Trump administration.
The White House and OPM didn’t respond to requests for comment.
NSF spokesperson Mike England said its actions were taken to ensure their compliance with the president’s DOGE executive order and thanked the dismissed “employees for their service to NSF and their contributions to advance the agency mission.”
Another fired worker warned that they were responsible for “literally tens of millions of dollars” and an 80-person grant review panel set to meet in the coming weeks. “My email is going to go dead at one o’clock and they’re going to say, where’s that guy?”
After the meeting, staffers began sending agencywide emails reviewed by E&E News that sharply criticized NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan and other top officials.
“If NSF’s top leadership has any dignity, they should resign immediately!” a business operations manager wrote. “At this point, witnessing the cowardliness at the top, NSF is serving no one!”
“The Director couldn’t even show up to the 10 AM firing call held for all of us,” an impacted program director said.
In a statement accusing Musk and Trump of damaging the nation’s competitiveness, Democrats on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee added to the pile-on.
“We are extremely disappointed in NSF leadership,” said Reps. Haley Stevens of Michigan and Zoe Lofgren of California, the committee’s ranking member. “They have failed American science by not standing up to [the Department of Government Efficiency] and protecting their employees. Dr. Panchanathan must reverse these firings.”
Reporter Chelsea Harvey contributed.
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