US science agencies facing financial uncertainty

Science funding for the U.S. government’s fiscal year 2025, which runs from October 1, 2024, to September 30, 2025, is on hold after months of failed budget negotiations in Congress. Below a continuing resolution Passed in December, lawmakers now have until March 14 to finalize the federal budget. In the meantime, science agencies will continue to be funded at 2024 levels.

A draft spending bill drafted by the House of Representatives calls for most science agencies to receive stable or reduced funding. Only the budgets of the Department of Energy Office of Science, the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the National Science Foundation (NSF) would see increases, which would be between 1.0% and 2.2%.

The proposed increases for NIST and NSF would not offset the 8% cuts to agency budgets received in 2024.

The Senate was more generous in its preliminary bill, giving NSF and NIST budget increases of 5.4 percent and 12.9 percent, respectively. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) would see a nearly 4% increase.

Once Congress accepts a consolidated version of the two bills, it will need to be signed by new President Donald J. Trump. But obtaining this signature is not guaranteed. In 2018, during Trump’s first term, he rejected Congress’s appropriations bill, resulting in a 35-day government shutdown. caused major disruption for chemists across the United States.

Trump has a mixed record on science funding. During his first term, he prioritized certain research spendingparticularly for artificial intelligence and quantum information science. But he also proposed “massive” budget cuts to scientific agencies as a means of reducing public spending.

These cuts were rejected by Congress last time, but Republicans’ trust in science has declined since the COVID-19 pandemic. according to a recent Pew survey. “It’s not the same Congress as that Congress,” says Dominique Baker, a University of Delaware professor who studies higher education policy. “I wouldn’t be shocked to see a decrease in funding.”

Beyond setting funding levels, the new presidential administration and entirely Republican-controlled Congress could change how agencies distribute funds. For example, last year the House passed a version of the National Defense Authorization Act this would have prevented the US Department of Defense from funding US universities for research collaborations with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. The language ended up being removed from final invoice.

As for the president-elect, Baker says she wouldn’t be surprised if Trump issued an executive order that would consider certain countries hostile. In this case, she said, “foreign nationals from these countries would have restricted access to financing and other potential resources.”

Science agencies that integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion into their funding processes may also experience changes when Trump takes office. His campaign presented his projects “to eradicate any attempt to weaken American institutions through these harmful and discriminatory “fairness” programs.”

For example, Baker says, diversity-related requirements for research proposals, such as the NSF’s broader impact statements, could be eliminated. Additionally, grants focused on expanding diversity within science could “potentially face new challenges in the way they are administered,” she says.