CLEVELAND — On July 7, Gov. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, penned a letter to Vice President JD Vance, expressing concerns to cuts at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Glenn Research Center related to proposed budget actions.
In the 2025 budget, NASA received $24.8 billion, but that number drops by more than $6 billion in the White House’s proposed 2026 budget. Nearly 6,000 full-time employees at the agency could lose their jobs under this plan.
NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and the Neil Armstrong test facility in Sandusky are facing a potential 38% reduction in force. The budget proposal calls for full-time staffing to be cut down from nearly 1,400 to 837, a loss of 554 jobs.
In his letter to Vance, who had been an Ohio senator before becoming the Vice President, DeWine highlighted the dangerous global times we’re living in and said NASA Glenn features “significant capabilities and synergies that are unique in the world.”
“NASA Glenn is agency lead for advanced uninterruptible communications systems, spacecraft power systems, and in-space propulsion capabilities,” he wrote. “More importantly, NASA Glenn also possesses worldunique research and test facilities like the Space Environments Complex, the In-Space Propulsion facility, and the Hypersonics Test Facility that uniquely model contested space environments. These are essential resources to meet rapidly emerging National Security imperatives, especially the President’s ‘Golden Dome’ initiative. We must not risk loss of these facilities and this workforce at this critical juncture.”
 
He continued, saying the work at NASA Glenn is also “augmented” by the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. He also re-advanced a call for the NASA headquarters to move from Washington, D.C., to Ohio.
This is something various state officials have been recently lobbying for.
“This move also gains significant efficiencies through co-location with the Air Force Research Lab and a vibrant NASA Research Center,” DeWine wrote in his letter. “If the President were to select Cleveland for NASA HQ, those civilians would be immediately transferable from Glenn functions to HQ functions. This would mitigate job loss and make NASA’s HQ transition to Ohio seamless.”
At the bottom of the typed letter, in what appears to be hand-written pen, DeWine added a less formal notation to the former Ohio senator:
“J.D. — Thanks for any help you can give us on this — Mike”