Highs and lows in scienceThe announcements of the Nobel Prizes in early October each year showcase science’s greatest achievements. This year, The Times is also highlighting some discoveries that may never be made because of the Trump administration’s budget cuts.
By most metrics, 2025 has been the worst year for the American scientific enterprise in modern history. Since January, the Trump administration has made deep cuts to the nation’s science funding, including more than $1 billion in grants to the National Science Foundation, which sponsors much of the basic research at universities and federal laboratories, and $4.5 billion to the National Institutes of Health. Thousands of jobs for scientists and staff members have been terminated or frozen at these and other federal agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Park Service.
To thousands of researchers — veteran scientists and new grad students at state universities and Ivy League institutions alike — these sweeping reductions translate as direct personal losses. Each may mean a layoff, a shuttered lab, a yearslong experiment or field study abruptly ended, graduate students turned away; lost knowledge, lost progress, lost investment, lost stability; dreams deferred or foreclosed. “This government upheaval is discouraging to all scientists who give their time and lend their brilliance to solve the problems beleaguering humankind instead of turning to some other activity that makes a more steady living,” Gina Poe, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote in an email. Next year looks to be worse. The 2026 budget proposed by the White House would slash the National Science Foundation by 56.9 percent, the N.I.H. by 39.3 percent and NASA by 24.3 percent, including 47.3 percent of the agency’s science-research budget. It would entirely eliminate the U.S. Geological Survey’s $299 million budget for ecosystems research; all U.S. Forest Service research ($300 million) and, at NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, all funding ($625 million) for research on climate, habitat conservation and air chemistry and for studying ocean, coastal and Great Lakes environments. The Trump administration has also proposed shutting down NASA and NOAA satellites that researchers and governments around the world rely on for forecasting weather and natural disasters. “The administration’s targeted cuts to waste, fraud and abuse in both research grant funding and visa programs are going to strengthen America’s innovative and scientific dominance,” said Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, in an emailed statement. He declined to provide specific examples. The American Association for the Advancement of Science has estimated that if the administration succeeds in its plans to cut the 2026 federal science budget to $154 billion from $198 billion — a 25 percent reduction — it would represent the smallest amount that the federal government has spent on science in this century. The result “would essentially end America’s longstanding role as the world leader in science and innovation,” Toby Smith, senior vice president for government relations and public policy at the Association of American Universities, told The New York Times in July. The Times has been asking dozens of scientists from across the country to describe what has been lost as a result of these changes. Their first-person accounts for this series, which you can read here, will appear regularly over the coming weeks, including in this newsletter. Has your scientific work been cut? We want to hear about it. You may be contacted by a New York Times journalist.
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