Science News & Analysis

FY2026 budget proposes to slash NIH by 40%, NSF by 57%, ending U.S. science leadership (May 2, 2025)

May 2, 2025 — President Trump's fiscal year 2026 budget request proposed $18 billion in cuts — nearly 40 percent — from the National Institutes of Health, $5.1 billion (57 percent) from the National Science Foundation, and $1.1 billion (14 percent) from the Department of Energy's Office of Science, which funds much of the basic physics, materials science, and computing research underlying American technological leadership. The proposals were the most radical proposed reduction to the federal science enterprise in the modern era — in absolute and percentage terms — and drew immediate bipartisan resistance in Congress.

The NIH budget cut proposal, if enacted, would have reduced the world's largest funder of biomedical research to a level not seen in inflation-adjusted terms since the early 1990s. Researchers noted that the NIH's decades of investment had produced essentially every major pharmaceutical advance in living memory — from cancer immunotherapy to antiretroviral drugs to mRNA vaccine technology — and that the compounding value of basic research means cuts made today suppress breakthrough treatments 15 to 20 years from now, when today's researchers would otherwise be translating their findings into clinical applications. Congress ultimately rejected the deepest cuts and increased the NIH's FY2026 budget by $415 million in November 2025 appropriations legislation. But the administration's FY2027 budget, submitted in spring 2026, proposed similarly drastic reductions, signaling a sustained ideological campaign against the federal research enterprise rather than a one-time budget maneuver.

The NSF proposal drew particular alarm for its breadth: the agency funds research in mathematics, physics, chemistry, computer science, engineering, social science, and education — areas directly supporting U.S. competitiveness in artificial intelligence, semiconductors, quantum computing, and advanced manufacturing that the same administration simultaneously claimed to prioritize. The American Association for the Advancement of Science warned that the proposed cuts would "cede American leadership" in every major field of scientific inquiry.