NSF budget proposal slashes funding across the agency

On May 30, the Donald J. Trump administration released its official budget request for the National Science Foundation (NSF), detailing how the US agency plans to operate on a meager $3.9 billion budget for fiscal year 2026, which begins Oct. 1. The proposed budget, which expands on Trump’s earlier proposal, would slash the agency’s budget by $5.1 billion, or 57%, from current funding levels.

To stay within the reduced budget, the administration plans to dramatically cut the amount of funding available to NSF’s eight directorates. Consequently, the reduction would drive down the NSF’s estimated funding rate—the percentage of proposals that get funded—from 26% to 7%.

The amounts cut from each directorate vary, from around 44% of current funding levels for the Directorate for Geosciences to 75% for the Directorates for Engineering and STEM Education. The Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS), meanwhile, is slated to lose two-thirds of its current funds, or nearly $1 billion. It’s unclear how the Division of Chemistry, which is housed within MPS, would fare.

All research disciplines would likely be impacted to some degree. Even areas the Trump administration has deemed national priorities would face budget cuts, including biotechnology, advanced manufacturing, and microelectronics and semiconductors.

Artificial intelligence is the only one of Trump’s priority areas that would see a funding boost, according to the budget request. Funding for quantum information science, meanwhile, would remain near current levels.

In addition to hindering the NSF’s ability to fund many areas of research, the Trump administration’s proposal would gut most of the agency’s postdoctoral fellowships, obliterating the NSF’s ability to train and support thousands of early-career scientists. The proposed budget also plans to reduce the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP), which provides 3 years of financial support to graduate students, to 55% of current levels.

NSF spokesperson Michelle Negrón declined to say how the reduced GRFP budget might affect the number of fellowships awarded next year.

The administration also plans to defund nearly all NSF programs aimed at broadening participation in science, despite congressional mandates to fund them. The NSF plans to allocate only $171 million to these programs, a sharp drop from $1.6 billion in fiscal year 2025.

In an email to C&EN, Negrón says the proposal “reflects a strategic alignment of resources in a constrained fiscal environment in which the NSF prioritizes investments that can have the greatest national impact.”

Alongside the NSF, other federal agencies also released their own detailed budget requests, which will now have to be approved by the US Congress.

For some legislators, Trump’s proposals are a nonstarter. “In no way can America continue to lead if Trump continues his vendetta against the scientific enterprise,” Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), ranking member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, says in a statement.