The U.S. Senate has confirmed Michael Kratsios to lead the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), with the technology executive winning much more support from Democrats than President Donald Trump’s controversial picks to lead federal health agencies.
Some 21 Democrats joined all 53 Republicans on Tuesday in confirming Kratsios, reflecting widespread hope within the U.S. research community that Kratsios will make the case for the importance of academic research in fostering innovation in the face of Trump’s campaign to slash spending and shrink the federal workforce. “Global scientific competition is unrelenting, and Director Kratsios has the skills and experience America needs to guide our federal science and innovation policy at OSTP,” says Barbara Snyder, president of the Association of American Universities, a coalition of 71 major research institutions.
But the two dozen Democrats who voted no don’t believe Kratsios can stem the tide of bad news since Trump took office 2 months ago. “There’s no indication that Michael Kratsios would take action to reverse the damage already done to America’s technology research, let alone stand up to Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s reckless attacks on science,” Senator Chris Van Hollen (D–MD) told ScienceInsider. “He cannot be trusted to take an evidence-based approach to this important job, so I voted against his confirmation.”
OSTP directors have historically seen their nominations be approved by unanimous consent. That was true even for physicist John Holdren, who served under former President Barack Obama and whose staunch support for combating climate change was sharply criticized by congressional Republicans during his confirmation hearing in 2009. Trump’s first OSTP director, research meteorologist Kelvin Droegemeier, was also warmly embraced by senators from both parties after the office had been without an acting director for nearly 2 years.
In fact, Tuesday’s vote was only the second time the Senate has taken an actual tally of yeas and nays for the director of OSTP, which was created in 1976. The first such tally was for his predecessor, Arati Prabhakar, who took the job midway through former President Joe Biden’s term after Eric Lander stepped down after admitting to fostering a hostile workplace.
Prabhakar, a materials scientist with two previous stints as an agency head under Democratic presidents, was confirmed by a largely party-line vote of 56 to 40. So Kratsios’s wider margin could be interpreted as a greater vote of confidence from Congress. At the same time, it falls short of the unanimous vote Kratsios received for his nomination to be U.S. chief technology officer during Trump’s first term.
For the past 3 years Kratsios has been managing director of Scale AI, an artificial intelligence infrastructure company. He is the first OSTP director without a science Ph.D. or extensive research experience. He will also serve as the president’s science adviser, a position that doesn’t require Senate confirmation, and as co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, along with David Sacks, special adviser for AI and crypto, once its members are chosen.
