Congress Is Reversing Trump's Steep Budget Cuts to Science
Source: New York Times
Jan. 10, 2026 Updated 10:47 a.m. ET
Congress is racing to undo thousands of cuts to federal science programs that President Trump called for last year when planning the government’s current budget. If enacted, the president’s bid for an overall cut in scientific funding to $154 billion from $198 billion — a plunge of 22 percent — would have been the largest reduction in federal spending on science since World War II, when Washington and the seekers of nature’s secrets began their partnership.
This week, the Senate Appropriations Committee released a bipartisan package of bills that largely scraps Mr. Trump’s planned cuts. Analysts say that, if the proposed budgets hold up in the weeks ahead, Congress will set aside roughly $188 billion for federal research — a drop of about 4 percent from the most recent annual budget. “That’s pretty solid,” said Alessandra Zimmermann, a budget analyst at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a scientific group based in Washington. “Congress is really starting to push back.”
Surprisingly, analysts foresee a possible rise of more than 2 percent in the budget category known as basic research — the blue-sky variety that produces fundamental strides and spinoffs in fields such as health care and artificial intelligence. Last year, the Trump administration called for a cut in federal basic research of more than one-third.
Mr. Trump sought even larger cuts for the National Science Foundation, which sponsors much of the nation’s basic research. He proposed that its budget be slashed to $3.9 billion from $8.8 billion, a drop of 56 percent. The Senate package countered with a reduction to $8.75 billion, or less than 1 percent.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/10/science/trump-science-budget-cuts-congress.html
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