Every week has brought more news about actions that, either as a collateral effect or a deliberate goal, will deeply damage science and engineering research in the US. Put aside for a moment the tremendously important issue of student visas (where there seems to be a policy of strategic vagueness, to maximize the implicit threat that there may be selective actions). Put aside the statement from a Justice Department official that there is a general plan is to "bring these universities to their knees", on the pretext that this is somehow about civil rights.
The detailed version of the presidential budget request for FY26 is now out (pdf here for the NSF portion). If enacted, it would be deeply damaging to science and engineering research in the US and the pipeline of trained students who support the technology sector. Taking NSF first: The topline NSF budget would be cut from $8.34B to $3.28B. Engineering would be cut by 75%, Math and Physical Science by 66.8%. The anticipated agency-wide success rate for grants would nominally drop below 7%, though that is misleading (basically taking the present average success rate and cutting it by 2/3, while some programs are already more competitive than others.). In practice, many programs already have future-year obligations, and any remaining funds will have to go there, meaning that many programs would likely have no awards at all in the coming fiscal year. The NSF's CAREER program (that agency's flagship young investigator program) would go away This plan would also close one of the LIGO observatories (see previous link). (This would be an extra bonus level of stupid, since LIGO's ability to do science relies on having two facilities, to avoid false positives and to identify event locations in the sky. You might as well say that you'll keep an accelerator running but not the detector.) Here is the table that I think hits hardest, dollars aside:
The situation at NIH and NASA is at least as bleak. See here for a discussion from Joshua Weitz at Maryland which includes this plot:
This proposed dismantling of US research and especially the pipeline of students who support the technology sector (including medical research, computer science, AI, the semiconductor industry, chemistry and chemical engineering, the energy industry) is astonishing in absolute terms. It also does not square with the claim of some of our elected officials and high tech CEOs to worry about US competitiveness in science and engineering. (These proposed cuts are not about fiscal responsibility; just the amount added in the proposed DOD budget dwarfs these cuts by more than a factor of 3.)
If you are a US citizen and think this is the wrong direction, now is the time to talk to your representatives in Congress. In the past, Congress has ignored presidential budget requests for big cuts. The American Physical Society, for example, has tools to help with this. Contacting legislators by phone is also made easy these days. From the standpoint of public outreach, Cornell has an effort backing large-scale writing of editorials and letters to the editor.
8 comments:
Prof. Natelson, are these cuts passed as is in the “big beautiful bill” that went through the House?
Anon@10:39, no. These cuts are proposed for the FY26 budget, which congressional appropriators are currently supposed to be writing, with the fantasy goal of passing it in a series of bills before the start of FY26 on October 1. The “big beautiful bill” is not a budget appropriation, but is a mix of tax code changes and planned rule changes for some social safety net programs. See https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0eqpz23l9jo. It’s easy to get confused, since our congressional system is very complicated and the media generally does a terrible job explaining this stuff.
Thank you for the clarification. Second question for you. I live in a blue district in a West Coast state where all of my representatives are democrats. I am happy to reach out and will reach out to them but how much value add is there?
Lol @ the notion of writing congress or emailing or whatever. Is there evidence that ever worked for anything at all (aside from psychological or virtue signaling purposes)? These MAGA morons seem determined to kill science in the US for whatever reasons, so I think more drastic measures need to be taken to correct course.
Anon@11:19, good question. I too live in a blue district and my representative already supports not cutting science, and she is also not on the House appropriations committee. I'm pretty sure my senators' staffs are tired of hearing from me. I wish I had a better answer. Clearly if you have a representative or senator who is on appropriations, that's potentially the most impactful. Still, making the point to generic congresspeople that people in their districts and states are going to be hit hard by this is generally important.
@Craystron, there are actual examples of pushing congress working, at least in the comparatively recent past. During the first T administration, there was a push to tax graduate tuition waivers as income (which is dumb, since the money never passes through the students' hands). There was major pushback, and it didn't make it out of committee. I've been told that constituent and professional organization pushing actually moved the needle on that one. That said, I agree that it feels like we are in a different world now. It also seems unlikely that science cuts are going to lead to large-scale civil disobedience. I wish I had better advice.
@Douglas Natelson, just to clarify, the proposal to tax tuition wavers in '18 actually passed the full House, and was ultimately removed in reconciliation with the Senate bill. Nonetheless, I think that you are right- this was a good example of how a relatively obscure issue that doesn't receive much attention from the general public can be swayed by a concerted campaign. Anticipatory defeatism, on the contrary, has a very poor track record.
A 23-Year-Old Crypto Bro Is Now Vetoing NSF Grants While Staring At His Water Bottle https://www.techdirt.com/2025/06/02/a-23-year-old-crypto-bro-is-now-vetoing-nsf-grants-while-staring-at-his-water-bottle/
Thank you for the update Doug! I think it's helpful for those not in the know to follow up a bit on the likely end result here ( I too got mixed up with the big beautiful bullshit bill). Isn't it likely that congress has to pass another continuing resolution since the republicans don't have a supermajority in the senate? Its funny how this would seem now like a miracle save for science vs these proposed cuts.
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