Congress rejected huge cuts to science in 2026, but Trump is trying again.
Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), during a television interview at the White House in Washington, DC, on Monday, July 7, 2025. Credit: Getty | Al Drago
On Friday, the Trump administration released its proposed budget for 2027. The budget blueprint includes significant cuts to NASA, but it targets even more severe limits for other science-focused agencies, with no agencies spared. The document is laced with blatantly political language and resurfaces grievances that have been the subject of right-wing ire for years.
If all of this sounds familiar, it’s because the document is largely a retread of last year’s proposal, which Congress largely ignored in providing relatively steady research budgets. By choosing to issue a similar budget, the administration is signaling that this is an ongoing political battle. And the past year has shown that, even if Congress is unwilling to join it in the fight, the administration can still do significant damage to the scientific enterprise.
What’s proposed?
Nearly everybody is in for a cut. The hardest-hit agencies, like the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), will see their budgets slashed in half. But even agencies that might be otherwise popular, like the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is overseen by Trump allies, will see $5 billion taken from its $47 billion budget. Agencies that have seemingly avoided political controversies, such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), would also see their budgets cut by over half.
In several cases, the cuts will eliminate major programs. For example, the NSF budget would be zeroed out for social science research; the NIH would lose both the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.
In addition, a couple of topic areas are targeted for cuts in multiple agencies. These include efforts to track and/or limit the impacts of climate change, which are targeted for cuts in a variety of agencies. This is what triggered the cuts at NIST. “The Budget slashes wasteful spending at NIST that has long funded awards for the development of curricula that advance a radical climate agenda,” the budget proposal announces. “NIST’s Circular Economy Program exploited grants to universities to push environmental alarmism.”
Similarly, programs that tackle disparities due to income or discrimination would also be cut. Even though things like health and environmental disparities based on race have been extensively documented, the budget treats any attempts to study them further or address them as illegal discrimination.
In a number of agencies, the administration is also shifting priorities, most notably in the Department of Energy and the NSF, where AI and quantum technologies are now expected to be major areas of focus. The reasoning behind this is unclear, given that these are already areas where private equity has poured large sums of money. It’s notable that, depending on exactly how Congress allocates the budget, these agencies may be able to shift focus to these topics even if they are not explicitly directed to do so by law.
A culture war document
While the numbers next to the dollar signs tell us a lot about the administration’s thinking, the document is striking for its over-the-top language. The Office of Management and Budget appears nearly incapable of using terminology like “climate change” or “sustainability.” Instead, these topics are consistently referenced with variants of the term “green new scam.” For example, in slashing the Department of Energy’s science budget, the document says, “The Budget eliminates funding for climate change and Green New Scam research.” Similar language features in cuts to NIST and ARPA-E.
The budget also makes some references to yearslong right-wing grievances. Apparently, the Trump administration is still upset that incandescent light bulbs have been replaced—something that dates back to a 2007 law. Yet the 2027 budget is still complaining about an agency that “was responsible for many Green New Scam efforts like research on wind energy and a slew of unpopular regulations harmful to Americans in their day-to-day lives, such as banning gas stoves and incandescent light bulbs.” (The gas stove ban hasn’t happened.)
Similarly, Anthony Fauci, who retired at the end of 2022, is apparently still influencing budgeting decisions in 2026, as he’s cited as contributing to “wasteful and radical” spending at the NIH. The specific radicalness cited includes “Dr. Fauci also commissioned ‘The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2’ publication, which was used to discredit and dismiss any assertion that COVID-19 leaked from a lab.” It’s notable that the virus’s natural origins are now widely accepted by the scientific community.
Beyond that, many sections of the document include short lists of grant titles presented as examples of wasteful or radical research. This is a standard tactic that goes back decades; often, the grants are fairly mundane or address issues like health disparities that were priorities for past Republican and Democratic administrations.
What to expect
The new budget is largely a variation on the one Trump had submitted for 2026, which Congress largely ignored. The chance that it will approve the same thing in 2027 seems remote. The only factors that might influence it are that the Republican Party is currently looking to lose control of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections, meaning this will likely be the last chance the administration has to pass something like this, which may cause it to push harder for its passage. There’s also the potential that the political calculus changes as the full economic and budgetary impact of the war in Iran becomes apparent.
That said, the past year has demonstrated that the administration can do a fair amount of damage to science even when Congress keeps funding constant. For example, last year saw NASA waste resources on planning to shut down missions based on the expectation that Trump’s budget would pass, only to receive funding to carry on the missions as normal. And the NIH has been changing how it funds many grants, which has meant that it funds far fewer while spending the same amount of money.
So, the degree to which science gets disrupted goes back to the same issue we saw last time: Is it possible for Congress to put enough conditions on the funding to limit the administration’s attempts to subvert its intent?
John is Ars Technica’s science editor. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemistry from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. When physically separated from his keyboard, he tends to seek out a bicycle, or a scenic location for communing with his hiking boots.
