Keivan Stassun, one of the dismissed board members, says the mass firing is the latest indication that the White House is ignoring the board’s authority and dictating policies at NSF, which has been without a permanent director since Sethuraman Panchanathan resigned exactly one year ago.

Stassun, an astrophysicist at Vanderbilt University who was appointed to the board in 2022, thinks the board’s public criticism in May 2025 of Trump’s proposed 55% cut to NSF’s current budget—which Congress ultimately ignored—antagonized the administration. “Maybe one way to say it from the administration's perspective,” Stassun says, “is that this group of presidential appointees was advising the Congress to not follow the president's wishes."

The White House’s decision last month to ask Congress to give NSF $900 million next year for a new Antarctic research icebreaker is another example of how the Trump administration’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has prevented the board from meeting its obligations, says Stassun, who until yesterday chaired the group’s committee on large research facilities.

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“OMB basically said very directly to NSF’s chief of research facilities that ‘you will build a new research vessel,’ and there was no involvement by the board, which is required to approve and authorize any major infrastructure investment by NSF,” Stassun notes. “And when the board asked, the response was, ‘Well, OMB was very clear in its directive.’”

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Lofgren worries Trump will “fill the NSB with MAGA loyalists who won't stand up to him.” But Stassun believes it doesn’t matter whether Trump restocks the board or leaves its positions unfilled. As proof, he points to the increasingly awkward conversations in the last year between the board and NSF’s top two officials: Brian Stone, Panchanathan’s former chief of staff and now designed NSF head, and Micah Cheatham, its chief management officer.

“We would ask them, ‘Are you following board governance directives?’” Stassun says. “And their answer would be, in effect, ‘We don't listen to you anymore.’”