More than 140 employees of the National Science Foundation have signed a letter denouncing what they described as efforts to undermine one of the country’s main science funding agencies. They accused the Trump administration of abruptly firing workers, withholding funds and decimating the agency’s budget. Out of fear of retaliation, all but one of the employees’ signatures are redacted.
The letter, addressed on Monday to Representative Zoe Lofgren, the senior Democrat on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, petitioned it to defend the mission of the N.S.F. and its employees.
The N.S.F. declined to comment on the letter.
The formal protest by N.S.F. employees followed similar ones made last month by workers from the National Institutes of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency, who criticized orders that they saw as unlawful and accused the administration of endangering public health. The E.P.A. suspended 144 of the signatories a few days after the letter was sent, a step that has been described by some as retaliation.
In a news conference on Tuesday, Representative Lofgren said the letter was submitted to her office as a whistle-blower complaint. In a statement thanking the signers, she added: “I promise to do all I can to protect you, protect your agency, and protect our scientific enterprise.”
Hundreds of NASA employees issued their own letter of formal dissent on Monday. Addressing the secretary of transportation, Sean Duffy, the letter warned the agency’s leadership that major budget cuts would harm science missions. President Trump appointed Mr. Duffy as interim NASA administrator this month.
All the N.S.F. employees in the letter that was released publicly signed anonymously, except for Dr. Jesus Soriano, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3403, the union representing the N.S.F. Nearly 50 of the signatories included their names in the private letter.
“It is the expectation that comes with being a union leader that you stand up for the employees you represent,” Dr. Soriano said in an interview. “But we don’t fight only for the employees. We fight as well for the mission of the agencies where we work.”
In the letter, the N.S.F. employees petitioned the House Science Committee to “ensure that N.S.F. employees are shielded from politically motivated firings and protected under merit-based personnel systems.”
One of the eight concerns enumerated in the letter involved the displacement of the agency from its headquarters in Alexandria, Va. In June, N.S.F. employees learned that in 2026 the administration would be moving the agency and giving the building to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The location for the new N.S.F. headquarters is still unknown.
In an interview, one N.S.F. employee who signed the letter said that the relocation announcement helped to catalyze the letter-writing effort. Another signatory pointed to the abrupt firings that occurred in February, when more than 10 percent of the agency’s staff was terminated.
Other complaints included the administration’s proposal to cut the agency’s budget by 56 percent and the terminations, by the Department of Government Efficiency, of more than 1,600 active grants, worth roughly $1.5 billion. The terminated grants supported laboratories, field sites and training for graduate and undergraduate students as well as STEM teachers.
“This action negates billions of dollars of past investments, violates Congressional intent in legislation such as the America COMPETES Act, and disregards N.S.F.’s peer review process,” the letter stated.
A recent analysis by The New York Times found that the agency has been awarding new grants at its slowest pace in at least 35 years. In the N.S.F. letter, the signatories warned that grants now underwent a “covert and ideologically driven secondary review process” before being given to scientists and institutions, a process they described as contrary to the agency’s apolitical mission.
“People see Washington and these federal agencies, and particularly science-based agencies, from afar, as something they’re not related to,” Dr. Soriano said. He added: “Unfortunately the damage, the dismantling of N.I.H., N.S.F., E.P.A. and others is having already immediate effects on people, and there will be also irreparable long-term effects.”
Alexa Robles-Gil is a science reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.
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