‘A very intentional attack on science’: Boulder councilmember loses CU job in federal research cuts

Last month, facing a surge of federal research cuts, Boulder City Councilmember Nicole Speer did something unusual: She eliminated her own position.

Speer runs a brain imaging research facility at CU Boulder that relies heavily on National Institutes of Health funding and other federal grants. When the Trump administration paused NIH grant reviews in January, a significant portion of her lab’s funding stream froze. Speer said they “ran out of time and money” waiting for funding to come through.

Her departure is part of a wave of Trump administration cuts sweeping higher education and the research community. So far, 54 federal grants at CU Boulder have been affected by terminations or stop-work orders — a disruption the university says is already affecting its workforce and critical research programs.

“The financial impact of grant terminations at the University of Colorado Boulder is in the tens of millions of dollars,” CU Boulder spokesperson Nicole Mueksch told Boulder Reporting Lab in a statement. “More importantly, these grants fund critical research that ultimately contributes to the nation’s economy, job market, national security and competitiveness with other countries.”

CU Boulder says it’s aware of eight employees who’ve experienced some form of job loss so far. But the true number is difficult to track. In many cases, including Speer’s, grant funding isn’t directly tied to a salary — and some grant terminations have been reversed.

The administration’s cuts span dozens of agencies, from the NIH and National Science Foundation to the EPA and the National Endowment for the Humanities. They also include more than 100 layoffs at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden and deep proposed cuts to NOAA in Boulder. 

Speer sees them as part of a broader pattern. “It’s a very intentional attack on science,” she said in an interview. She added later over email that when a political leader wants to move toward more authoritarianism, “they destroy or weaken any institution capable of checking their power. U.S. science is one of those institutions.”

She warned that the economic ripple effects won’t stop at the labs. Sales and use taxes make up about 40% of the City of Boulder’s revenues. 

“As folks like me can start pulling back on their spending, that has an impact on our businesses and the services industry,” Speer said. “The city being so dependent on sales tax is a really big problem.”

A lab without a lifeline

Speer’s facility operates a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner used by scientists to study the brain. Scientists typically pay to use the facility with grant money, much of it from the NIH. This year, demand for the facility was at an all-time high — but with delayed grants, the scanner is projected to operate only half as much next year, dropping from 1,300–1,400 hours to around 700.

In April, Speer and her team reviewed staff roles and decided to cut two leadership positions effective July 15: hers, which is part-time, and a second full-time role. The team has 15 employees, including students and hourly staff, but only five salaried positions. 

“It’s not that this stuff won’t get done,” she said. “It’s just going to take a lot longer to do, because there will be fewer people doing it and they are not as fluent with the work as we are.”

Speer plans to run for reelection to city council this fall. Her future — and livelihood — may depend on the outcome. Councilmembers currently earn about $12,500 a year, but a voter-approved measure will raise salaries to roughly $40,000 starting in late 2026. 

“I did not realize that when I was pushing for an increase in council pay, it would impact my ability to be on council,” Speer said.

If reelected, she plans to find a temporary job until the pay increase takes effect. If not, she expects to begin searching for a new full-time position — a daunting prospect in such a specialized field. Speer has a Ph.D. in psychology and has worked in her current role for about 13 years.

“Jobs like mine — maybe there’s 40 or 50 around the country,” she said. “It’s not like there are other jobs available in the Boulder area.” She believes many others in Boulder’s research community are in a similar situation. “I don’t know that there are replacement jobs for a lot of folks without some retraining,” she said. She plans to contact Workforce Boulder County after her job ends in July.

Cuts ripple across CU and Boulder

Of the 54 terminated federal grants at CU Boulder, 24 came from the National Science Foundation, which recently announced it would terminate awards “not aligned” with its priorities, “including but not limited to those on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and misinformation/disinformation.” The move prompted the NSF director’s resignation.

At CU Boulder, one canceled project aimed to improve educational AI tools for children. Associate Professor Casey Fiesler told 9News that may have been pulled simply because the word “misinformation” appears in the project abstract — even though the project wasn’t about misinformation. Another cut targeted an EPA-funded study on reducing health risks from wildfire smoke near schools.

Several universities have sued the NSF, arguing the terminations are unlawful and undermine scientific research.

The bigger picture

The White House’s proposed 2026 budget would slash federal research funding by billions — including eliminating several agencies entirely and halving the budgets of others. The NIH is targeted for deep cuts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities would be eliminated. The proposal would also eliminate NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, and all 16 of its cooperative institutes, including CU Boulder’s CIRES, which conducts climate and Earth science research, and CSU’s CIRA. 

Union organizer Christopher Barnes said CIRES employees are already preparing for mass layoffs, and sources inside the institute said some have already been seriously affected by grant terminations. In nearby Golden, more than 100 people were laid off from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory this week, CPR first reported.

These cuts would reverberate across Boulder County, home to thousands of scientists at  NOAA, NIST, NCAR and affiliated institutes. Local business leaders are sounding the alarm: In a letter to the Department of Commerce, the Boulder Chamber urged preservation of NOAA’s research operations, citing broad economic consequences for Colorado and beyond.

The proposed budget is just the first step in a process that requires congressional approval. But the White House has directed at least some agencies to begin aligning operations with the 2026 budget “as much as legally possible.” Congressman Joe Neguse, speaking at a protest outside NOAA’s Boulder offices last month, said the administration does “not have the authority to implement these cuts without congressional approval.”

Speer worries her job loss is part of a larger unraveling.

“Science has always been an impediment to greed, absolute power,” she said. “My job is among the first to go, but at the rate our democracy is failing, it won’t be the last.”