Dear Commons Community,

Jeffrey Mervis, policy analyst for Science, has an article this morning on how the Trump administration is trying to radically change the National Science Foundation (NSF). Here is an excerpt.  

“Smaller. Cheaper. More constrained. That appears to be the vision for the National Science Foundation (NSF) that is emerging from an unprecedented series of changes by President Donald Trump’s administration, including moves last week to restructure the organization and transform how it awards grants.

The changes would result in a shrunken NSF that focuses on a handful of fields seen as economic drivers rather than supporting basic research across all disciplines. Its process of choosing what to fund would no longer rely heavily on scientists on leave from their universities, bringing with them fresh ideas on how to invest in cutting-edge science. And NSF would care less about finding the “missing millions,” NSF’s phrase for increasing the diversity of the country’s scientific workforce. 

Trump is a long way from achieving that vision for the country’s second largest funder of science. But last week’s restructuring comes on top of previous steps that have halted new awards, terminated existing grants, and reduced the agency’s 1700-person staff. The administration has also called for slashing NSF’s overhead payments to universities, and shrinking its $9 billion budget by more than half.

NSF officials have been largely silent about the larger significance of the changes. And its presidentially appointed oversight body, the National Science Board, so far has not commented on any of them, although one member, Alondra Nelson, resigned this week. And though individual scientists have expressed alarm about the turmoil at the agency, the sharpest public criticism to date has come from a handful of Democrats in Congress, who think the changes are misguided and will harm NSF and the U.S. research enterprise.

“Mere months ago, each of these individual decisions would have been an unprecedented shock,” a dozen members of the science committee in the House of Representatives that oversees NSF wrote in an 8 May letter to Brian Stone. He has been NSF’s acting director since the abrupt resignation last month of Sethuraman “Panch” Panchanathan, a Trump appointee. “President Trump has made this chaos and destruction commonplace. However, we refuse to accept this as our new reality.”

A 9 May memo obtained by Science from NSF’s chief management officer, Micah Cheatham, describes some of the changes. Science has learned about others from sources inside and outside the agency who requested anonymity because they feared reprisal.

One major change would abolish NSF’s current 37 divisions, spread across eight directorates, which distribute funding to researchers in a wide range of fields, from the social sciences to physics. Those divisions would be replaced by clusters that would focus on five areas: artificial intelligence, quantum information science, biotechnology, nuclear energy, and translational science.

Last week, NSF preemptively eliminated one of those divisions within the education directorate, on equity for excellence in science, technology, engineering, and math, and fired its entire staff, believed to number between 15 and 20. However, on 12 May NSF rescinded both moves after a federal judge temporarily blocked the White House from laying off workers at several agencies in a suit brought by a labor union representing federal employees.

“The focus on a few areas is gravely concerning,” says Suzanne Ortega, who leads the Council of Graduate Schools. “The basic, curiosity-driven science that has paid off so handsomely for the country over the decades doesn’t necessarily start in one of those fields. And the idea that the insights of social scientists aren’t important in understanding today’s world and our political adversaries is just ridiculous.”

A second change dramatically reduces NSF’s roster of employees on loan from universities for stints of 1 to 4 years. The number of such positions, called rotators, would drop by 81%, from 368 to 70. The surviving positions would be distributed across the five priority areas and filled by existing rotators “to the maximum extent possible,” Cheatham said in his memo.

A third major disruption to the status quo is the termination of existing grants. In the past month, NSF has pulled the plug on more than 1400 awards, amounting to a loss of more than $1 billion in promised funding.

The education directorate has been hit hardest. The terminations include grants from several programs mandated by Congress, notably the 34-year-old Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation and the Eddie Bernice Johnson INCLUDES Initiative to broaden participation in science and engineering, which began in 2011. The Trump administration apparently saw both programs as violating a presidential directive on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) that bans funding for any research that favors one demographic group or excludes participation by some groups.

The grant terminations have disproportionately affected principal investigators (PIs) from groups traditionally underrepresented in science—notably women, racial and ethnic minorities, and those with disabilities—according to data collected by NSF. Women are PIs on 58% of the canceled grants, although they are PIs on only 34% of all active NSF grants.

Similarly, Blacks are PIs on 17% of the terminated grants, although they make only 4% of the total pool. Hispanic PIs and those with disabilities were twice as likely to lose a grant.

All the recent moves are consistent with Trump’s request to Congress this month to shrink the agency’s budget by 55%, to $4 billion, for the 2026 fiscal year that starts on 1 October. So is NSF’s plan to reduce by 60% the number of administrators classified as senior executive service (SES) employees, who earn salaries much higher than the regular federal pay scale. NSF’s current roster of 143 SES positions will plunge to 59, according to Cheatham’s memo, a number it says is commensurate with NSF’s “new organizational structure and proposed future budgets.”

NSF’s decision to abolish its divisions also appears to be part of a larger restructuring of the agency’s grantmaking process that would add a new layer of review. Currently, for all but the biggest grants, the final step in the award process is for a division director to concur with a recommendation made by a program officer, based in part on input from review panels. (The NSF system differs from the one used by the National Institutes of Health, where advisory councils for each institute have the final say and proposals are typically funded based on scores assigned by a review panel.)

Last week, NSF staff were briefed on the new process for vetting proposals. Those that are highly recommended, but modestly out of step with the DEI directive, could gain final approval after tweaks, according to a slide presentation obtained by Science. But proposals seen as having more serious flaws would be declined without additional comment. And even proposals that get a green light from a division director would be screened by a new body, whose membership has not been determined.

Science advocates fear the additional review could be a mechanism to force NSF to fund only research that suits the ideological bent of the Trump administration. And Democrats on the House science committee suspect NSF is already feeling that pressure. “So, who is in charge here?” they wrote to Stone. “How much is [the White House budget office] dictating decisions based on hard-right political ideology and not scientific or research expertise?” And in a reference to billionaire Elon Musk and his team at the Department of Government Efficiency, the legislators ask pointedly: “How far does DOGE’s influence reach?”

The legislators could soon get a chance to ask those questions in person if, as has long been the tradition, House and Senate panels summon NSF officials to testify on the administration’s budget request.”

This is a sad state of affairs for science research in our country.

Tony