\n<\/p>\n
NASA Staff Rebuke White House Cuts in Rare Public Dissent<\/p>\n
A declaration of dissent from past and present NASA employees warns that science and safety are at risk and joins similar documents from staff at other federal science agencies<\/p>\n
A NASA logo is displayed at the entrance to the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters building on June 2, 2025 in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n
Kevin Carter\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
More than 280 NASA employees past and present, including at least 4 astronauts, have signed a declaration of opposition to the many drastic changes that the administration of US President Donald Trump is working to enact. The declaration also urges the acting head of NASA not to make the unprecedented budget cuts Trump has proposed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe last six months have seen rapid and wasteful changes which have undermined our mission and caused catastrophic impacts on NASA\u2019s workforce,\u201d reads the employees\u2019 letter to interim administrator Sean Duffy. It argues that Trump\u2019s changes threaten human safety, scientific progress and global leadership at NASA.<\/p>\n
The Voyager Declaration joins similar protest documents by employees at other US federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The appeals stem from Trump\u2019s sweeping campaign to overhaul the federal government, which has led to mass firings of workers and the proposal of steep cuts to agency budgets.<\/p>\n
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The declaration is \u201cabout getting our dissent out to the public and saying, hey \u2014 this is what\u2019s happening at NASA, and this is not OK\u201d, says Ella Kaplan, who has signed the document. Kaplan works on a contract basis as a website administrator at NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and was speaking on her own behalf and not that of her employer or of NASA.<\/p>\n
Kaplan says she does not expect Duffy to read the document or to care much about it if he does. When Duffy ran for a seat in the US Congress more than a decade ago, he released a campaign advertisement that featured him wearing lumberjack clothing and saying he would bring his axe to \u201ctopple the big spending in Washington\u201d.<\/p>\n
The agency is not interested in sustaining \u201clower-priority missions\u201d, said NASA spokeswoman Bethany Stevens. \u201cWe must revisit what\u2019s working and what\u2019s not so that we can inspire the American people again and win the space race.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Voyager Declaration, named after the twin NASA spacecraft that are exploring interstellar space, protests against staffing cuts at the agency and Trump\u2019s proposed cuts to science funding and other NASA budgets. The agency has fired some employees and pressured others to leave, resulting in the loss of more than 2,600 of the 17,000-plus NASA employees, according to news platform Politico. At least US$118 million in NASA grants has been cancelled outright, and the White House has proposed slashing nearly half of the agency\u2019s science budget for next year.<\/p>\n
Congress, which sets US spending, might reject at least some of those proposed cuts. But the managers of many NASA science projects have been asked to draw up plans for winding down their programmes even though Congress hasn\u2019t finalized the budget \u2014 drawing dissent from the declaration\u2019s signers. \u201cOnce operational spacecraft are decommissioned, they cannot be turned back on,\u201d the document says. NASA, like other agencies, is supposed to follow spending priorities laid out by Congress, and Duffy, as interim administrator, could theoretically ignore the White House requests until a budget is finalised.<\/p>\n
The declaration asserts that since Trump took office, safety has taken a back seat to politics, marking a \u201cdangerous turn\u201d away from NASA\u2019s efforts to make human space flight less risky. Stevens responded that \u201cNASA will never compromise on safety.\u201d<\/p>\n
The document\u2019s signers also disapprove of the agency\u2019s withdrawal from international missions, saying that such actions threaten partnerships with other nations\u2019 space agencies. The White House budget proposal, for instance, would cancel NASA participation in European Space Agency missions to Mars and Venus.<\/p>\n
Dissent by employees at other federal agencies has met with mixed reactions. At the NIH, where more than 480 employees signed a Bethesda Declaration, director Jay Bhattacharya has said he intends to foster respectful dissent. But EPA administrator Lee Zeldin has placed more than 100 signatories to a dissenting document on administrative leave, saying he will not tolerate employees undercutting the president\u2019s agenda. Staff at the US National Science Foundation are also planning a declaration, according to a leaked version of the document.<\/p>\n
Of the 287 signatories to the NASA document, 156 are anonymous.<\/p>\n
Additional reporting by Dan Garisto.<\/p>\n
This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on July 21, 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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