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ALEXANDRIA, Va - The Trump administration on Friday terminated all 24 outside members of the National Science Board, the independent body that oversees the National Science Foundation, the roughly $9 billion basic-research agency now headquartered in Alexandria's Carlyle Innovation Campus.
Five of the dismissed members are based at universities and research institutions in the greater Washington region. The board's chair, Victor R. McCrary, is vice provost for national security innovation at The Catholic University of America in Washington, where vice chair Aaron Dominguez serves as the university's executive vice president and provost. Bevlee Watford is professor emerita of engineering education at Virginia Tech. Sudarsanam Suresh Babu holds the Clark Distinguished Chair in materials science and engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park. And Sarah O'Donnell, a UVA-trained engineer, serves as a distinguished chief engineer at the National Security Engineering Center, a federally funded research and development center administered by McLean-based MITRE Corporation.
Members were notified Friday by email from the White House Presidential Personnel Office that their positions had been terminated effective immediately, according to reporting Friday by The Washington Post and Science magazine. The board, established under the National Science Foundation Act of 1950, advises the president and Congress on national science policy and has statutory authority to set NSF policy and approve large grants. Members serve staggered six-year terms designed to span presidential administrations; the cohort Trump dismissed included scientists whose appointments ran as late as 2030.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, issued a statement Saturday calling the dismissals "a real bozo the clown move." Lofgren, whose committee has jurisdiction over NSF, said the firings were the latest in a pattern of damage Trump has done to American science and innovation, and warned that filling the apolitical advisory board with MAGA loyalists would only accelerate the country's loss of scientific leadership to its adversaries.
McCrary, who is serving his second term on the board, told Science the dismissals come at a particularly damaging moment given the administration's proposed 55% cut to NSF's fiscal year 2027 budget. He said the country should be spending more on basic research, not less, and that "now is not the time to go backwards" if Trump intends to deliver the golden age of science he has promised.
Other dismissed members include Vanderbilt astronomer Keivan Stassun, who told Science the firings may make little practical difference because the board's relationship with NSF leadership had already deteriorated, with acting NSF director Brian Stone and chief management officer Micah Cheatham increasingly disregarding board governance directives. Marvi Matos Rodriguez, senior vice president of technology at fusion-energy company Zap Energy and a member appointed in 2022, told the Post she was in the middle of reviewing an 80-page report for upcoming board business when notice of her termination arrived.
The roster Trump dismissed also included Heather Wilson, his own first-term secretary of the Air Force and now president of the University of Texas at El Paso. The board's bipartisan composition — with members appointed by Trump as well as former presidents Obama and Biden — is by design. The staggered term structure is meant to insulate the body from political turnover.
The firings land on an Alexandria agency already battered by more than a year of upheaval. The Alexandria Brief reported in November that NSF would remain in the city after months of uncertainty, signing an unusually short 48-month lease to relocate roughly 1,600 employees to the Randolph Building at 401 Dulany Street, half a mile east of the Eisenhower Avenue headquarters the agency was forced to vacate to make room for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD began moving its roughly 3,000 employees into the old NSF building in March.
Since Trump returned to the White House last year, his administration has canceled or suspended nearly 1,400 NSF grants and, in a February 2025 round of layoffs, cut roughly 10% of NSF's workforce — including all of the agency's contract scientific experts. The president's fiscal 2027 budget request would cut NSF funding by more than half. Trump has nominated former HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O'Neill to lead the agency; the nomination remains pending before the Senate HELP Committee.
As of Sunday, the White House had not said whether or when it would name replacements for the dismissed board members.
