The US Congress has agreed on much larger budgets for science agencies than those proposed by US President Donald Trump. Credit: Douglas Rissing/Getty
The US Congress is poised to approve legislation rejecting the huge and unprecedented cuts to science sought by the administration of US President Donald Trump.
Under the latest deal, announced on 20 January, the US National Institutes of Health would see its budget increase by around 1% percent this year — in sharp contrast to the 37% cut proposed by the White House. Lawmakers have until 30 January to finalize the NIH deal and other spending legislation to avoid a partial government shutdown, which would be the second closure in less than three months.
How Trump is following Project 2025’s radical roadmap to defund science
The NIH agreement follows separate legislation approved by Congress on 15 January that would minimize cuts to most of the other main science agencies. Overall, spending on research and development that is not related to national defence is projected to decline by 3—7%, far less than the 33% cut sought by Trump, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Washington DC. Total investments in basic research would actually increase by more than 2%.
“This is good news in comparison to last year”, when the Trump administration put forward its spending plan, says Alessandra Zimmermann, who tracks science budgets and policy at AAAS. Prior to that, however, “these numbers would have felt catastrophic,” Zimmermann says, and it’s still an open question whether the administration will actually spend the money as directed by Congress.
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy did not immediately respond to questions about its spending plans.
Small raise for NIH
Under the proposed agreement, the NIH budget would rise by US$415 million to $48.7 billion for 2026. The agreement would also preserve the agency's current structure of 27 institutes and centres. (The Trump administration had proposed in May to cut the agency’s budget to $27.9 billion, eliminate four of its institutes and centres and consolidate the remaining 23 into eight institutes.)
This slim increase is “good news”, says Jeremy Berg, a former director of an NIH institute who is now a data scientist at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. “It could have been much worse.” But he adds that the increase does not keep pace with inflation, so it would effectively be a slightly reduced budget in terms of purchasing power.
... continue reading