Details of Trump’s Budget Cuts Alarm Researchers

Academics are alarmed by newly released details that show how exactly the Trump administration plans to cut billions from scientific research. Among other things, the administration’s proposed cuts would drastically reduce funding earmarked for building a robust STEM workforce pipeline and redefine the government’s priorities for which types of research it will fund with the money that’s left.

In early May, President Donald Trump outlined some of the cuts in his “skinny budget” proposal for fiscal year 2026, which included slashing nearly $18 billion from the National Institutes of Health and $5 billion from the National Science Foundation, two of the largest sources of federal funding for university research.

At the time, the research community said that if enacted, Trump’s budget plan for the NIH and NSF would decimate innovation, productivity and national security in the United States. And after the administration released further details Friday, research advocates doubled down on their condemnations.

“If enacted, the FY26 budget request would end America’s global scientific leadership. The cuts to science would imperil our nation’s future health, security and prosperity,” Sudip Parikh, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, wrote in a statement. “This budget proposal stands in stark contrast to the President’s call for a renewed commitment to American scientific leadership. Congress has demonstrated a bipartisan commitment to investment in research and must do so again to answer the President’s call.”

The budget request is just a proposal, and Congress has the final say on how to allocate federal dollars. During Trump’s first term, he regularly proposed deep cuts to federal agencies, which didn’t make it through Congress.

In addition to the proposed cuts at NIH and NSF, the administration wants to slash about $12 billion from the Education Department, which includes a $532 million cut to the Institute of Education Sciences and zeroing out many programs. The overall budget plan aims to reduce spending throughout much of the federal government. For example, the proposed budget also ends support for all educational and cultural exchange programs at the State Department, which includes the Fulbright scholarship.

But after the Trump administration canceled research grants at the NSF and NIH and slowed down the approval process for any new grant funding, the budget documents highlight how the president could codify those cuts and reduce the federal government’s role in advancing research.

Below are some key details about how those cuts would affect the nation’s research and development’s infrastructure. The administration says it’s all part of a plan to advance “gold standard science,” but researchers and higher ed groups say the cuts could deal at detrimental blow to the agencies.

NIH Restructuring

The budget outline Trump unveiled last month called for consolidating the NIH’s 27 institutes and centers into eight—while outright eliminating the National Institutes for Nursing Research, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, the Fogarty International Center, and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities—and slashing $17.9 billion from its overall budget, which was $47 billion in 2024.

The budget documents released Friday say the “restructuring will create efficiencies within NIH that will allow the agency to focus on true science, and coordinate research to make the best use of federal funds,” and offer more details about how overhauling the agency would advance its commitment to “gold standard science and the restoration of scientific integrity and transparency.”

The latest version of the plan shows that only three of the NIH’s existing institutes—the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the National Institute on Aging—would retain their names, though they would all lose billions in funding. According to STAT, NCI’s budget would drop from $7.2 billion to $4.5 billion; NIAID from around $6.6 billion to $4.2 billion, and NIA from $4.4 billion to $2.7 billion.

Nearly all of the NIH’s remaining budget would go toward funding the agency’s five new institutes that will result from consolidating the other institutes that aren’t up for elimination. However, the budgets for the new institutes would be less than the combined budgets of the institutes and centers they’ll consolidate.

Indirect Costs Capped

Additionally, the budget details released Friday call to continue capping indirect research cost rates at 15 percent into 2026 to ensure “that the United States taxpayer is funding only necessary project costs, not extraneous salaries or flashy new buildings at wealthy universities.”

For decades, all colleges and universities that conduct federally funded research have negotiated bespoke reimbursement rates with the government to partially fund research costs that apply to multiple projects, such as laboratory space or specialized equipment. In February, the NIH usurped legally required congressional approval to cap those rates at 15 percent, which was quickly blocked by a federal judge after a coalition of universities, advocacy organizations and Democratic attorneys general sued. (It remains blocked as litigation continues.)

Officials wrote in the budget proposal that all of these moves to overhaul the NIH—where more than 1,000 employees have been fired—are aimed at “ending wasteful practices focusing on DEI, gender ideology and focusing on NIH’s mission of only impactful science,” while also fostering a “culture where scientists can express disagreements and pursue academic and scientific freedom.”

But research advocates say cutting so much money for the largest funder of biomedical research in the world will hurt American health and prosperity in the long run.

According to a report from United for Medical Research, every dollar the National Institutes of Health spent on research funding in 2024 generated $2.56 of economic activity.

“If the proposal is enacted, Americans today and tomorrow will be sicker, poorer, and die younger. American research has a proven track record of increasing survival, reducing the burden of illness, and creating jobs. Cutting research funding helps no one; instead, it hurts everyone,” Research!America president and CEO Mary Woolley said in a statement.

Debbie Altenburg, senior vice president for research policy and advocacy at the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, similarly said in an email that “this magnitude of cut would be devastating to the U.S. biomedical research community, our nation’s leadership in biomedical innovation, and delay or deny life saving cures for patients suffering from debilitating diseases.”

NSF Scholarships Axed

And based on the newly released details about the NSF budget cuts, future generations will likely have fewer scientists who are equipped to make advances in both the medical and nonmedical science fields.

Trump’s skinny budget proposed cutting the NSF’s budget by 57 percent from a little over $9 billion in fiscal year 2024 to $3.9 billion. And the agency wants to achieve many of those cuts by limiting and eliminating federally funded STEM training opportunities.

If the budget the NSF released Friday is approved, it would decimate funding for STEM students and early-career scientists. Compared to fiscal year 2024, the NSF would allocate $167.2 million for scholarships and fellowships—a 65 percent cut. Additionally the NSF would allocate $5.6 million for postdoctoral fellowships—a 91.4 percent cut.

Funding for the NSF Research Traineeship program would be entirely eliminated, as would funding for eight of the NSF’s 10 postdoctoral fellowships, including those in engineering, astronomy and biology.

The NSF’s long-standing Broadening Participation initiatives, which support efforts to increase the participation of a wide range of individuals, institutions and communities in STEM fields, would also decrease from $1.6 billion to $171 million. But the vast majority of those programs would be zeroed out under the new proposal, including Advancing Informal STEM Learning, CISE Education and Workforce, and Research Experiences for Undergraduates, which for decades have funded summer research projects at top institutions and helped launch young scientists’ careers.

The few programs that would remain—including the Tribal Colleges and Universities Program, HBCU Excellence in Research, Innovative Tech Experiences for Students and Teachers, and the Estab­lished Program to Stim­u­late Com­pet­i­tive Research—would all face dramatic budget cuts. For example, the TCUP, which aims to increase the number of Native Americans in STEM careers, would receive $7.1 million in 2026 compared to $16.5 million in 2024.

The NSF’s 2026 budget, according to Friday’s proposal, “reflects a strategic alignment of resources in a constrained fiscal environment” and the Trump administration’s “policy to invest in programs that serve all Americans equally.”

“NSF is prioritizing investments that complement private-sector R&D and offer strong potential to drive economic growth and strengthen U.S. technological leadership,” the agency’s proposal said. “This approach ensures public funding is directed toward areas where it can have the greatest national impact.”

But data shows that investing in federally funded research yields big returns for the economy. A 2024 paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas showed that rates of return on nondefense R&D spending range from 140 to 210 percent.

Joshua Weitz, a professor of biology at the University of Maryland, countered in a post on BlueSky that the proposed cuts to the NSF and NIH—as well as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration—would be nothing short of a “catastrophic” decision that “will set the US R&D landscape back 25 yrs+, cause economic and job loss now, and undermine innovations to come.”

The administration proposed slashing NASA’s budget by about a quarter, from $24.8 billion in 2025 to $18.8 billion in 2026.

“Speak up now before it is too late,” Weitz said, urging others to lobby their congressional representatives to push back against the proposed cuts.