Science Agencies Brace for Mass Layoffs

A flurry of news reports this week suggests that the Trump administration’s plans to aggressively downsize the federal workforce will extend to science agencies.

The National Science Foundation has been asked to prepare to lay off between a quarter and half of its staff in the next two months, according to reporting by Politico on remarks made by a senior NSF employee at an internal meeting. The administration may also propose cutting NSF’s $9 billion budget to as low as $3 billion, an anonymous source told Ars Technica. (FYI has not been able to independently corroborate these accounts.)

Cuts of that magnitude have been proposed in the past by Russell Vought, whom the Senate confirmed yesterday as director of the White House Office of Management and Budget on a party-line vote. In 2022, Vought’s Center for Renewing America proposed cutting NSF’s annual budget to just under $4 billion to “force a reprioritization of the core mission of NSF and eliminate the leftward march of the agency and its funding choices.”

Congressional Democrats expressed alarm about the Politico report at a Wednesday hearing on the state of the U.S. research enterprise held by the House Science Committee. Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) said she has heard corroborating reports from individual agency employees but is unsure if they are accurate.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration may also be in line for major cuts. Former NOAA officials told CBS News that current employees “have been told to expect a 50% reduction in staff and budget cuts of 30%.” Vought’s 2022 budget blueprint proposed a 20% cut to NOAA, citing a desire to eliminate its focus on “climate extremism.”

Although Congress uniformly rejected the steep budget cuts that President Donald Trump proposed for science agencies in his first term in office, Trump is now aggressively challenging congressional spending prerogatives. Trump’s rapid dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development has raised fears that other agencies could be next. (Unions representing USAID workers have filed lawsuits attempting to reverse the dismantling.)

The National Institutes of Health is also bracing for upheaval along with the rest of the Department of Health and Human Services. Trump is considering an order that would direct HHS to fire thousands of employees, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Trump’s nominee to lead HHS, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said last year he wants to immediately fire around 600 employees at NIH. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) raised the subject in his Senate confirmation hearing, expressing concern that Kennedy indicated to her in a private meeting that he intends to “clean house” at NIH. Kennedy responded in the hearing by saying he wants to remove “corrupt” scientists, citing recent reporting about how a NIH researcher manipulated images used in research papers.

The administration is exploring a variety of mechanisms to downsize the federal workforce. The Office of Personnel Management has asked agencies to produce lists of employees who joined recently and are still on their probationary periods, which makes them easier to remove. OPM has also made offers of deferred resignations to hundreds of thousands of federal employees. (The initial deadline to respond was yesterday but a judge extended it to permit further court proceedings on whether the offers are legal.)

In addition, Trump is in the process of reclassifying swaths of federal workers into roles that have fewer civil service protections, arguing that policymaking positions should be subject to greater political control. An executive order issued his first day in office creates a new “Policy/Career” category in the schedule of civil service positions, a renaming of the “Schedule F” order he issued toward the end of his first term.

Agencies could also undergo a reduction in force (RIF), a legal mechanism to lay off federal workers. Federal regulations permit RIFs due to reasons such as agency reorganizations, lack of work, and shortage of funds.

The administration is already attempting to merge USAID into the State Department, and it is rumored to be considering moving at least part of NOAA into the Interior Department. There will likely be lawsuits challenging the authority of the president to take such moves absent congressional authorization.

Another action that could lead to major staffing changes is Trump’s pledge to move up to 100,000 federal employees out of the DC area. For instance, policymakers have begun to talk about the prospect of moving NASA’s headquarters out of DC to states such as Florida or Texas.