Scientific revolt against Trump grows: 150 National Science Foundation workers denounce its "dismantling"

The Trump administration's announced 56% cut to the National Science Foundation's budget would "cripple American science," according to an open letter from 150 employees of the agency, which has funded the research of 262 Nobel Prize winners in its 75-year history. The signatories denounce the "systematic dismantling" of the organization, with budget cuts exceeding 70% in biology, engineering, and science education. "If implemented, it would undermine America's scientific leadership and eliminate funding for more than 250,000 researchers and students," the letter warns, echoing three similar cuts issued in the last month by employees of NASA , the National Institutes of Health, and the Environmental Protection Agency. It is an unprecedented scientific rebellion.

At the foundation, with an annual budget of $9 billion, there is fear. The Trump administration laid off more than 10% of the staff in February, so arbitrarily that a federal court has already ordered the reinstatement of some employees. Only one of the 150 signatories of the letter dares to appear publicly by name: Jesús Soriano , a Spaniard who studied medicine at the University of Alicante and has worked at the American foundation, known as NSF, since 2012.

“What's happening at the NSF is like nothing we've ever faced before,” laments Soriano, president of the agency's workers' union . “Our members—scientists, program managers, and other staff—have been attacked for doing their jobs with integrity. They've faced retaliation, mass layoffs, and the illegal withholding of billions in research funding,” he explained Tuesday at a press conference in Washington, alongside Democratic Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren. “For 75 years, the NSF has made this country a destination for students, innovators, and Nobel laureates. In just over six months, this administration has gutted it,” Lofgren proclaimed.

The open letter details that the Department of Government Efficiency—led until May by the world's richest man, Elon Musk—has canceled more than 1,600 previously awarded grants, "without transparency or legal justification," nullifying "billions of dollars in prior investments." Until now, the NSF, with a staff of around 2,000 , boasted of funding the work of more than 350,000 people. Since May, the president of the NSF's governing body has been Spanish engineer Darío Gil , until then global director of research at the American multinational IBM.

The 150 signatories, led by Soriano, are demanding that their independence be guaranteed, that the withheld funds be released, and that NSF employees be "protected from politically motivated termination" with a merit-based employment system. The workers have sent their letter to the Democratic members of the House Science Committee as an official complaint , seeking to be covered by the whistleblower protection law against possible retaliation from the Trump administration.

The letter joins three similar ones published in the last month: one signed by some 500 employees at the National Institutes of Health, another by nearly 300 Environmental Protection Agency employees , and another submitted this Monday by another 300 people linked to NASA. Hundreds of the signatories are anonymous for fear of retaliation. The Trump administration has already temporarily suspended 139 Environmental Protection Agency employees who supported the letter, The Washington Post reported . Four months ago, more than 1,900 members of American scientific academies—the global elite in their disciplines—published another open letter denouncing the “real danger” posed by President Donald Trump’s “systematic attack on science.”

The 150 NSF employees complain that they cannot carry out their work "under a climate of fear, censorship, and institutional sabotage." If congressmen do not correct the course set by Trump, they warn, the damage will be irreversible: "To put it simply, the United States will cede its position of scientific leadership to China and other rival countries."