The US Senate Committee on Appropriations is poised to reject President Trump's proposed budget cuts for science agencies, including the NSF and NASA. A vote was scheduled to advance a fiscal year 2026 funding bill, but an unrelated dispute caused a recess. Trump's proposal would drastically reduce federal funding for basic research, but advocacy efforts have led to a proposed decrease of only 0.67% for NSF. The bill aims to maintain essential NASA missions, contrary to Trump's severe cut suggestions, marking a potential shift in congressional priorities regarding science funding.
If enacted, Trump's proposal would have a devastating effect on US science; earlier this week, the American Association for the Advancement of Science released an analysis suggesting that the proposal would cut all federally-funded basic research by one-third.
'This bill protects key science missions,' Jerry Moran, a Republican senator from Kansas, said at the meeting.
Under the Senate committee's bill, the NSF budget would drop by only 0.67%, rather than by 57% as Trump requested, and many NASA space and Earth-science missions would continue rather than being shut down.
The senators came to an impasse on an unrelated matter - the location for the new headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) - and the committee went into a recess for an unknown length of time.
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