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Killed. NSF’s SBE was killed, in violation of law. The President does not have the power to choose to kill programs at a whim by defunding them. The imperial presidency was a mistake and we are in a separation of powers constitutional crisis.

(Not dunking on @wamsleylab.bsky.social she’s right, I would just use a more active verb.)

A few notes ‘42 U.S.C. § 1862(a)(1) says NSF is "authorized and directed" to support research in the mathematical, physical, medical, biological, SOCIAL, and other sciences.’ www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/...

42 U.S.C. § 19055 (CHIPS § 10346) requires the Director to solicit SBE researchers for cross-cutting programs and to put them on merit review panels. Arguably this is Congress asserting SBE will exist! www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/...

This statute (Public Law 115-402 115th Congress, 2018) says “the Director… working through SBE…” That provision makes no sense if SBE is dead (Edited 11:48 via @skeetsapp.com)

Moreover, Congress designed NSF to have a presidentially-appointed and Senate confirmed director, and a National Science Board serving not at the pleasure of the pres, to check the power of the director. But SCOTUS and Trump killed that structure. NSF today isn’t what Congress designed

What is likely going on here: Vought, Project 2025, Trump etc want to kill social and behavioral research, blow up basic science, harm universities, and destroy govt generally. So they are defunding SBE almost completely, leaving a shred of activity behind so Vought can plausibly assert in court

that it’s not completely dead and giving the Roberts Court and Fed Soc judges plausible deniability to help him in this step of his political agenda.

Since someone asked—the way to fix this is by big structural reforms. Proportional representation in Congress, add seats, add states, quadruple Congressional investigatory and policy staff, reform/disempower the Article III branch, rewrite admin law etc. All of it requires re-empowering Congress.

The problem is that Congress has to *want* to be empowered.

problem is that most in Congress have become corrupted and don’t have an incentive to change. DC is also far from many people in the US. if we take this opportunity, 250 yrs, to add a Capitol & Executive building in Sw Illinois ish- more folks can petition them… US much bigger in pop & Geography/1

it can help disrupt some of the corruption, get more responsiveness with more people being able to see their reps. we can get more folks from those areas to intern, get staff jobs and get experience in representative government. these may be a good resource for them to advocate for these things /2