This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Since the start of his second term last year, President Donald Trump has sought to weaken the federal foundations underpinning American science, slashing or stalling research funding, firing or pushing out thousands of scientists, canceling grants for ideological reasons and shuttering research facilities across the country.

But even against that bleak backdrop, the administration’s firing of all 22 current members of the National Science Board last week stands out as “one of the darkest moments” of the past year and a half, said Jacquelyn Gill, a paleoecologist and biogeographer at the University of Maine.

“It was incredibly chilling, and my stomach just dropped to my feet when I saw that the entire board had been fired,” Gill said. “Because now this last bastion of accountability and transparency and scientific expertise has been dismantled overnight.”

“It’s not a surprise,” notes one scientist, given the Trump administration’s “continuous onslaught of attacks on science.”

The National Science Board plays a key role in overseeing the National Science Foundation, a major research funder in fields such as chemistry, engineering, biology, the environment, computing, and technology, which supports academic inquiry and helps train the next generation of scientists.

The NSB and the NSF were designed to be “driven by our best and brightest scientific experts who are really........

© Mother Jones