Trump Budget Proposes Cutting National Science Foundation By 56 Percent, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That The Government Was Funding Research Before Knowing Whether It Would Work

WASHINGTON. The White House on Friday released a fiscal year 2026 budget request proposing to cut the National Science Foundation by roughly 56 percent, reducing the agency's funding from about 9 billion dollars to about 3.9 billion dollars and resolving a long-standing concern that the federal government had been paying for research before anyone could confirm it would succeed.

The proposed reduction would return the foundation, created by Congress in 1950 to underwrite basic scientific inquiry, to a funding level it last occupied roughly two decades ago. It followed a sequence of related measures: the arrival of Department of Government Efficiency staff at the agency on April 14, an April 18 announcement terminating more than 1 billion dollars in active grants deemed no longer consistent with administration priorities, and a White House directive to dismiss roughly half of the agency's 1,700 employees. NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan, whom the President had nominated during his first term, resigned on April 24.

Officials described the cut as a long-overdue correction. Basic research, by definition, funds work whose practical applications cannot be specified at the time the money is spent, a feature the administration identified as the underlying problem. A source within the Office of Management and Budget said the foundation had spent decades "writing checks against questions," and added that the government remained eager to support science the moment science could supply its conclusions in advance.

The foundation has historically funded early-stage work later associated with technologies including the laser, magnetic resonance imaging, the artificial-intelligence techniques behind modern language tools, and the search algorithms underpinning the internet, none of which had been described as commercially promising at the moment its grant was approved. Under the new framework, the United States would preserve the option of funding such research after other nations had finished it.

Universities reported that graduate programs in physics, climate science, and computing would contract, and several institutions in Europe, Canada, and China announced recruitment campaigns aimed at American researchers within days. Administration officials characterized the resulting departures as a reduction in headcount.

At press time, the administration had reaffirmed its total commitment to American scientific leadership, provided that leadership could be secured without funding any of the underlying science.