Trump’s purge of National Science Board condemned as a ‘real bozo the clown move’ | EUROtoday

Critics are alarmed by the information that the Trump administration reportedly fired all 22 present members of the National Science Board, the physique that steers the National Science Foundation and advises Congress and the president on prime scientific points.

In a press release on Saturday, Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California referred to as the choice a “real bozo the clown move.”

“This is the latest stupid move made by a president who continues to harm science and American innovation,” she stated. “The NSB is apolitical. It advises the president on the future of NSF. It unfortunately is no surprise a president who has attacked NSF from day one would seek to destroy the board that helps guide the Foundation.”

“Will the president fill the NSB with MAGA loyalists who won’t stand up to him as he hands over our leadership in science to our adversaries?” she added.

“This unseemly political maneuver must be seen for what it is: An attempt to silence independent scientists, shut down evidence-based decision making, and keep the public in the dark,” Gretchen Goldman, president and CEO of the Union of Concern Scientists, wrote in a weblog publish.

The National Science Foundation directed inquiries to the White House, which didn’t instantly reply to a request from The Independent for remark.

The White House reportedly fired the members of the board on Friday with little clarification.

The advisory physique, whose members serve six-year phrases, helps information the general path of the NSF’s greater than $9 billion finances. It helps approve main bills and units long-term priorities for the company, the engine of primary non-medical science and engineering funding within the U.S., which has had a hand within the creation of main applied sciences like GPS and the web.

“What it means is that there won’t be any practical impediments to the administration essentially enacting their own budget and priorities and ignoring Congress’ directives or congressional law,” Keivan Stassun, a professor of physics and astronomy at Vanderbilt University who was amongst these fired, informed The Lost Angeles Times.

“What we’re likely to see is a collapse of what has historically been a broad investment in American science and technology capabilities,” he added. “The most transformative discoveries are transformative because you can’t predict them in advance, so we invest foundationally in scientists and engineers to do basic science and engineering research.”

The reported firings are the most recent signal of uncertainty and upheaval on the NSF.

Last April, NSF director Sethuraman Panchanathan resigned from the company, as personnel from the Trump administration’s slash-and-burn DOGE cost-cutting program had been working inside NSF to cancel scores of grants.

The following month, board member Alondra Nelson resigned, citing the DOGE takeover, alleging the Elon Musk-led effort had “by fiat the authority to give thumbs up or down to grant applications which had been systematically vetted by layers of subject matter experts.”

Last yr, the White House proposed a 55 p.c lower to the NSF finances, which Congress rejected. The administration has once more requested cuts as a part of the fiscal yr 2027 finances.

In March, the administration nominated Jim O’Neill, a former deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and biotech investor, to guide the science company.

O’Neill, who has but to go for a listening to earlier than Congress, can be the primary NSF chief who lacked a proper scientific or engineering background.

In its first yr in workplace, the Trump administration terminated or froze greater than 7,800 analysis grants, whereas roughly 25,000 scientists and staffers at research-related companies left the federal government, in line with Nature.

Last summer time, the administration eliminated all of the members of an influential CDC vaccine advisory board, a few of whom had been changed by vaccine skeptics.

The administration equally eliminated members of an autism advisory board, putting in members of their place who had beforehand made debunked claims linking vaccines to autism.

The president has an extended historical past of denying well-established science, and he referred to as the local weather disaster “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” final yr on the United Nations General Assembly.

The president has proved supportive of the know-how trade, although, championing synthetic intelligence and cryptocurrency.

His administration has pushed to hurry the event of AI information facilities throughout the U.S.

Members of the tech trade donated thousands and thousands to the president’s marketing campaign, inauguration and White House ballroom mission.