To the alarm of congressional Democrats, NASA officials have spent much of the last several weeks moving around people and equipment at Goddard Space Flight Center outside Washington.
NASA’s decision to start shuttering buildings and relocating expensive equipment at Goddard during the government shutdown has raised concerns that the Trump administration is plowing ahead with its proposed plan to slash NASA’s budget. The White House wants steep cuts at the space agency — particularly for earth science, which is central to Goddard’s mission.
Both Democrats and Republicans have pushed back on the proposed cuts, but the Trump administration already has tried repeatedly this year to freeze or delay spending on programs it doesn’t like across the federal government — even when Congress previously has approved the funding.
The Trump administration is “taking advantage of a government shutdown to rapidly accelerate the timeline for the Goddard moves while broadening their scale and breadth to a degree that risks drastically negative consequences for agency scientific capabilities,” wrote Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, the top Democrat on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, in a letter to acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy.
