Sweeping layoffs architected by the Trump administration and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency may be coming as soon as this week at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a nonregulatory agency responsible for establishing benchmarks that ensure everything from beauty products to quantum computers are safe and reliable.
According to several current and former employees at NIST, the agency has been bracing for cuts since President Donald Trump took office last month and ordered billionaire Elon Musk and DOGE to slash spending across the federal government. The fears were heightened last week when some NIST workers witnessed a handful of people they believed to be associated with DOGE inside Building 225, which houses the NIST Information Technology Laboratory at the agency’s Gaithersburg, Maryland, campus, according to multiple people briefed on…
