NASA Staff Slam Leadership for “Complete Breakdown in Communication” Under Trump

Since Donald Trump retook the White House earlier this year, the relationship between NASA staffers and government leadership has become unbelievably fraught. From the point-of-view of the rank and file, it’s been a deluge of unforced errors as layoffs, budget cuts, and asset liquidations take a devastating toll on morale.

If anyone in the Trump administration cares, it clearly isn’t getting the message. According to the group Goddard Engineers, Scientists and Technicians Association (GESTA), which represents a broad swath of NASA staff, there has been a total collapse in the chain of operations from the space agency to the government.

“Throughout there has been a complete breakdown in communication from NASA agency and Center leadership where decisions are rarely communicated, almost always only verbally, and not directly by the decision makers,” the employee union announced, according to NASA Watch.

The statement comes as NASA prepares to close 13 buildings across the Goddard Space Flight Center, including some 100 separate laboratories, to the widespread condemnation of agency workers.

As reported by Space.com, NASA’s puppet leadership — installed by Trump starting with Sean Duffy in July, who’s simultaneously running the Department of Transportation — have been illegally moving to implement Trump’s disastrous 2026 budget request before being approved by Congress. Though NASA leadership dispute this, workers paint a grim picture of an agency being stripped for parts.

“The atmosphere, from my perspective, at least, has been incredibly dark and depressing,” astrophysicist Casey McGrath told the publication. “I feel like the people I work with, myself included, have just been demoralized, exhausted, terrified, frustrated and angry, for months and months on end with no pause whatsoever.”

“It does feel like there is an overlap between the political party in charge of your NASA center and how your NASA center is faring right now,” a researcher named Claire told Space.com.

“Goddard is a science-based center with a lot of engineers,” she continued, “and a lot of their missions are canceled out (in the President’s budget request). It’s taking a huge hit to the civil service workforce. It does feel like Goddard is now being singled out.”

In October, GESTA’s parent union, the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers or IFPTE, filed suit against Trump’s White House, which issued an executive order revoking union bargaining rights for NASA’s unions. In it, Trump explicitly argued that NASA’s primary purpose was “national security” — ironically aligning with left-wing critics of the agency as a product of the Cold War arms race.

Trump’s attack on NASA‘s unions, however, is anything but progressive.

More on NASA: Whistleblowers Say NASA Is Poised to Kill an Astronaut

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