It might be time for American resesrchers to look seriously into other places to apply their skills. Under Trump’s budget proposal, the 2026 budget of the National Science Foundation (NSF), one of the world’s leading funders of basic research, would drop roughly US$ 5 billion, a cut of about half compared to its 2024 budget. The budget targets climate science, clean energy, and “woke” social, behavioural, and economic sciences. It would also cut “broadening participation” programmes, which aim to attract members of underrepresented groups to science, by $1.1 billion, a roughly 80% reduction from the last 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, a 20% decrease.
Media reports from Reuters ay that half of the NSF staff could be terminated. 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.