The White House is believed to have made a last-minute decision to pause mass firings at NASA after fears that up to 10 percent of its 18,000 federal staff were to be let go by the end of Tuesday.
Hundreds of space agency employees were braced Tuesday as reports loomed of mass layoffs for probationary staff as Donald Trump attempts to trim the federal workforce and slash trillions from government spending through Elon Musk-lead Department of Government Efficiency.
But in the 11th hour, the Trump administration reportedly spared the station’s federal staff from the latest round of cost-cutting measures – which was predicted to have shrunk the agency’s workforce to the lowest level since 1961.
"We were on pins and needles throughout the day," one senior official at Johnson Space Center told Ars Technica on Tuesday afternoon.
Several of NASA’s field center directors received confirmation from the White House that their staff would not be dismissed, per the outlet.
Officials at the Johnson Space Center told its almost 3,000 employees that it would be exempt from the “impending layoff plan,” according to an email reviewed by the Houston Chronicle on Tuesday evening.
Senior NASA sources, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Space News that facilities such as the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama were also excluded.
It is not known whether all of NASA’s estimated 1,000 probationary civil servants – many of whom are just beginning their careers – across all 10 of the space agency field centers and its Washington, D.C. headquarters avoided termination.
While the reasoning behind the reprieve wasn’t immediately clear, two sources told Ars Technica that it was possible Jared Isaacman, Trump’s pick to lead NASA, may have asked for the cuts to be paused.
The Independent has contacted NASA and the White House for more information.
Tuesday’s U-turn does not mean there won't be staff and budget cuts at the agency in the coming weeks and months.
The news of looming lay-offs came after NASA Acting Administrator Janet Petro confirmed last week that members of DOGE were on-site at the agency’s facilities to review contracts and spending.
It raised concerns over conflicts of interest concerning SpaceX founder Musk, though Trump told reporters in Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday that he “won’t let Elon” take part in space-related government decisions.
Before the White House back-tracked on its decision, California Representative George Whitesides, a former NASA chief of staff, shared his fury on X on Tuesday.
“Indiscriminately firing the next generation of NASA scientists, engineers and wider team members is exactly the wrong step to secure America’s leadership in space – just as competition with China is reaching fever pitch,” he wrote.
The narrowly-avoided staff cuts coincide with approximately 750 NASA employees that are believed to have accepted an offer to take “deferred resignation” later this year, delivered in the form of an infamous “fork in the road” email, Ars Technica said in another report.
NASA had already seen a chaotic few weeks in the wake of Trump's diversity, equity, and inclusion crackdown, with the agency ordering employees to remove all symbols relating to LGBTQ+ pride from clothing and workspaces.
An agency source told the outlet that morale inside the agency was “absurdly low.”
