At the Kill the Cuts rally on April 8th, I gave the following speech to Caltech and USC contingents in front of the 300 North Los Angeles Federal Building. I hope its words resonate with the current scientific/political/cultural moment. They represent my truest feelings, the joyous and the vitriolic, as best as I can compress and verbalize them.
JPL implemented its third round of layoffs in 2024 on November 13, cutting 325 employees—roughly 5% of its workforce. This latest reduction follows earlier waves: 100 contractors in January and 570 additional employees and contractors in February. As a result, JPL’s workforce now stands at approximately 5,500 employees. These job cuts stem from a funding crisis centered around the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, a flagship NASA initiative designed to retrieve and analyze Martian rock and dust samples on Earth.
