This is being circulated at #NASA regarding new performance evaluations to be done 4x a year. Note: “Faithful Support of Administration of the Law and the President’s Policies” are Number 1 criteria for both SES & SL/ST NASA personnel.
This is being circulated at #NASA regarding new performance evaluations to be done 4x a year. Note: "Faithful Support of Administration of the Law and the President's Policies" are Number 1 criteria for both SES & SL/ST NASA personnel.
— NASAWATCH (@nasawatch.bsky.social) 2025-05-01T16:09:47.061Z
40 Comments
Nice to see they no longer care about results. /s
Loyalty > competence in any dictatorship.
This is what America chose. This is the Republican Party.
I work with many NASA colleagues. These news physically hurt. All the best and stay strong.
whomever wrote that up is crazy. they probably don’t even understand the constitution at all.
Utterly disgusting. The Trump shi*t stain on our sciences and government will take years if not decades to remove.
Demanding loyalty to a person instead of adhering to existing law is usually reserved for totalitarian regimes.
25% weight for faithfulness to the President
15% weight each for merit, achievement, accountability, efficiency, and anything else
Holy shit
This is horrifying, but it’s also an opportunity to organize.
How do employees fake their way through this review? What talking points and conservative buzzwords are the reviewers looking for?
The reply to this tweet (what’s the bluesky equivalent of tweet anyway?) should be several examples of spin. Anything can look like it fits the Trump agenda if you twist it enough. So everyone needs to start posting suggestions on how to twist it. Crowdsource a response the enemy would buy.
So, every 12 weeks every employee has to go through a “fingernail and underwear” inspection?
What a nightmare.
For what it’s worth, this isn’t NASA, this is coming from the White House, and it’s Government-wide.
See the [the executive order ](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/restoring-accountability-for-career-senior-executives/) and [corresponding OPM guidance ](https://www.chcoc.gov/content/maintaining-integrity-career-senior-executive-service) which spells out the specifics.
#1 item is loyalty to Trump.
Even given how much vote fraud was committed, the fact that so many Americans voted for Musk/Trump is simply the end of America.
I suppose NASA has a fine history of demanding the impossible but respecting the law and this president’s policies at the same time is just a bit too much to ask.
Speaking as someone with decades of management experience – quarterly performance reviews is a mechanism to fire people. There is no other reason to do performance reviews that frequently.
What does “Administration of the Law and President’s Policies” mean?
They did this in the 50s during the Red Scare. Now we’re doing it to appease the Orange Smear.
Sheesh and unfortunately America won’t slide of the democracy scale for this. That is exclusively reserved for countries that have ‘strategic’ (i.e. our billionaires want to exploit) value to the US. I can’t name too many countries even countries that do democracy via single party that have something like this ascribed.
“Didn’t shout sieg heil enthusiastically enough. Recommend termination…”
“2. Government Efficiency.”
“Four times a year”
Hey, I just found a way we can improve efficiency! Annual rather than quarterly reviews.
Get me off this planet and paint a giant middle middle finger on each stage of the launch vehicle.
Faithful support of the administration and its policies is essentially what destroyed Challenger.
The engineers told them not to launch, but the Reagan administration wanted a political win after scrubbing it multiple times already.
These kinds of performance criteria literally kill people.
Aint a single thing going to get accomplished at NASA over the next four years except for brain drain.
Dictators gotta dictate. I’m currently re-reading 1984 and Trump is Big Brother. How long until he creates the Ministry of Love?
Loyalty to the cult first..absolutely ridiculous
Its such a bad argument demanding loyalty to the President’s agenda. Congress is in power too. Government employees work for the government, not one man.
Well, if both “the Law” *and* “the President’s policies” are equal priorities, that’s an irreconcilable paradox right there. The President’s policies are blatantly illegal.
In the USA, achieving your goals is job… um… five.
Come soon to each office: Control Officer – Presidential Policy (COPP) who’s primary mandate is to ensure compliance with policies on a daily basis. Secondary function is to serve as a contact for office snitches.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to be faithful to both the law and the president’s polices at the same time.
glad im not a rocket scientist.
To make a more nuanced comment., nah fuck it, its shit.
So what they are saying is that there will be thousands of extremely well educated and competent scientists out of their job that are likely also going to be persecuted by the State and thus be open to moving to the EU or Canada? Good time to invest your money into anything that isnt American I guess.
No.4: “Holding others accountable…”
Spy on thy neighbour.
It’s unfortunate that a news organization can’t report the news accurately. SES and SL/ST have **different Number 1 criteria**:
* SES – “Faithful Administration of the Law and the President’s Policies”
* SL/ST – “Faithful **Support of** Administration of the Law and the President’s Policies”
The critical difference is that SES is expected to faithfully administer these policies, while the SL/ST workers need only be supportive of them.
All that screeching about only hiring and retaining employees based on merit, and yet their own performance evaluations rank that as #3. This should make it incredibly obvious that loyalty to Fuhrer Trump is more important than anything else but I get the feeling maga will conveniently ignore this too.
Fascists demand loyalty over all else, yes. This is not a surprise. Look at the cabinet and R congresspeople. Are they chosen for their competence or their obedience? The fact that they are overwhelmingly bumbling invertebrates might be a hint.
This is disgusting and one of an almost infinite things now that should have been the last straw. This will also weaken the US with brain drain as they leave to Europe or Canada.
Instead of there being biometric id scanners, there’ll be an authentic reproduction of Trump’s anus mounted by every door – lick it and you’re in.
Aside from the blatant ego stroking and arse kissing, fuck having to write 4x performance reviews a year!
Ain’t no one got time for that, and these guys have rockets to build!
Sounds like they are using translations from Mao to title these EOs!
So…loyalty oaths.
This will surely increase productivity at NASA.
ESA needs to step up, no matter how insanely difficult it may be. This is utterly insane.