More congressional spending panels are pushing back against the drastic research cuts sought by President Donald Trump. And energy research would actually get a small boost.
The appropriations committee for the U.S. House of Representatives today released spending blueprints for several science agencies that are much less draconian than Trump has proposed for the 2026 fiscal year that starts on 1 October. The subcommittee that oversees the Department of Energy led the way, proposing a 2% increase for the department’s Office of Science, to $8.4 billion, rather than the 14% cut that Trump wants. A subcommittee overseeing the Department of the Interior has proposed a 5.6% cut to the U.S. Geological Survey rather than the 39% reduction Trump wants, and a 6.5% cut for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees most of the nation’s endangered species, instead of Trump’s 32% decrease.
The news isn’t as good for the National Science Foundation (NSF) and science missions at NASA. The subcommittee overseeing those agencies disagreed with Trump’s request to cut their budgets roughly by half—but legislators fell far short of the recommendations last week from a Senate panel to maintain funding for both agencies at current levels. Instead, the House panel is proposing a $2 billion cut, to $6.3 billion, for NSF’s research directorates, and a $1.3 billion reduction, to $6 billion, for NASA’s panoply of science missions. In percentage terms, that’s a drop of 21% at NSF and 18% at NASA.
