US President Donald Trump’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 calls for unprecedented cuts to scientific agencies that, if enacted, would deal a devastating blow to US science, policy specialists say.

On 2 May, the White House released a budget document for the upcoming fiscal year, which starts on 1 October. The proposal is a ‘skinny budget’ that is light on details, but calls for disproportionately large cuts to federal science funding. According to the White House document, the proposal would cut all non-defence spending by 23%, but it targets the US National Science Foundation (NSF) for a 56% funding reduction, and would slash the budget of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) by roughly 40%. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would be hit by a 55% cut as the administration seeks to eliminate what it calls “radical” and “woke” climate programmes. On the day the budget was released, the EPA announced plans to dismantle its primary research division.

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Later this month, the presidential administration is expected to release a more detailed budget. Observers warn that Trump might still seek cuts to money already allocated by Congress for fiscal year 2025.

Ultimately, it is the US Congress that decides how the federal budget will be spent — not the president. But Trump’s proposal is a starting point for congressional negotiations, and there are signs that many members of Congress will go along with Trump’s recommendations.

In a statement, US representative Tom Cole, a Republican from Oklahoma and chair of the House Appropriations Committee, said that the budget “lays the foundation for restoring a government that serves the people — not itself”.

Science-policy researchers say the budget could be disastrous for the next generation of scientists. “The message that this sends to young scientists is that this country is not a place for you,” says Michael Lubell, a physicist who tracks science policy at the City University of New York. “If I were starting my career, I would be out of here in a heartbeat.”

If Congress enacts this budget, “the consequences for the future of our nation will be catastrophic”, said Sudip Parikh, chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a non-profit organization in Washington DC, in a statement.

In another statement, Victoria LaCivita, the spokesperson for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, responded: “The administration is re-focusing investments in the priority areas that America must continue to lead in, securing our standing as a global tech leader and ending woke science spending.” Among the priority areas, she said, are artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing and nuclear energy.

Nature’s news team breaks down the budget proposal and implications for science.

National Science Foundation

Under Trump’s proposal, the 2026 budget of the NSF, one of the world’s leading funders of basic research, would drop by roughly US$5 billion, a cut of about half compared with its 2024 budget. The cuts target climate science, clean energy and “woke” social, behavioural and economic sciences. The budget would also cut $1.1 billion from “broadening participation” programmes, which aim to attract members of under-represented groups to science; that’s roughly an 80% reduction from the past few years.

Although the funding for AI research and quantum sciences would be kept at current levels, it is unclear how well the agency itself will function: the budget calls for a $93-million cut to operations. That would mean a decrease of roughly 20% below the amount requested for fiscal year 2025. Media reports say that half of the NSF staff could lose their jobs. If the cuts go through, “I don’t know how the agency functions as Congress intended it”, says Kenneth Evans, a science-policy researcher at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

National Institutes of Health

The administration has proposed slashing the budget of the NIH from about $48 billion in 2025 to roughly $27 billion in 2026 — a cut of some 40%. If enacted, this would be the most drastic cut ever for the NIH, which is the world’s largest funder of biomedical research.

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The request also proposes to collapse many of the agency’s 27 institutes and centres into 5 new ‘focus areas’. Funding for institutes that focus on health in minority groups and on international research would be eliminated entirely.

These cuts would “absolutely devastate the biomedical research enterprise” and the US economy, which is dependent on that enterprise, says Carole LaBonne, a stem-cell biologist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. “It’s incredibly short-sighted.”

The Trump team justifies these massive cuts by repeating its previous criticisms of the agency: “NIH has broken the trust of the American people with wasteful spending, misleading information, risky research, and the promotion of dangerous ideologies that undermine public health,” the budget document says.

Former NIH director Monica Bertagnolli, who was appointed by then-president Joe Biden, a Democrat, was appalled to see the administration’s rhetoric. “Each one of these statements has been litigated in the past and found to be grossly inaccurate or false,” she says. “This is a very unfortunate and distorted view of an organization I know to be dedicated to improving the health of all people.”

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

The administration seeks to cut the budget for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which was roughly $9 billion in 2024, by roughly one-third and to eliminate programmes such as one aimed at preventing chronic diseases. That’s despite the stated commitment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr — who, as secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, oversees the CDC — to support such activities.

NASA

NASA’s budget would drop by 24.3% from its 2025 level, to $18.8 billion in 2026. That’s the largest single-year cut relative to the previous year’s funding ever proposed. The agency’s science division, including astrophysics, planetary and Earth-science research, would be slashed by nearly half. Among the projects targeted for cancellation are climate-monitoring satellites and plans to bring back rock samples from Mars using robotic spacecraft. A coalition of space-science advocates has spoken out in recent weeks against the proposed cuts, saying they would usher in a “dark age of space science at NASA”.

Human space-flight programmes would see dramatic changes. The proposed budget cuts funding for the International Space Station, but pours more money into lunar and Mars exploration — including $1 billion for unspecified “Mars-focused” programmes. That’s in keeping with the administration’s priority of landing astronauts on the Moon and Mars before China does. The budget proposes retiring the government’s heavy-lift Space Launch System rocket after two more flights, including one scheduled to take astronauts to the Moon in 2026.