Congress Proposes Strong Science Funding for 2026

Congress Proposes Strong Science Funding for 2026

By Dan Vergano edited by Clara Moskowitz

Rejecting devastating cuts to science funding proposed by the Trump administration, a congressional panel released three bipartisan bills that would only slightly trim 2026 budgets at NASA, the National Science Foundation and other science agencies on Monday. Under these bills, some agencies, such as the Department of Energy and National Institute of Standards and Technology, would receive slight increases.

Lawmakers hope this three-bill “minibus,” which covers agencies ranging from the Department of Justice to the U.S. Forest Service, will pass as part of a larger spending package for the U.S. government in 2026. The speaker of the House, Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana, said on social media that the House of Representatives will vote on the bills this week, a prelude to a U.S. Senate vote. The votes need to pass ahead of a January 30 deadline to avert another U.S. government shutdown.

“This package rejects President Trump’s push to let our competitors do laps around us by slashing federal funding for scientific research by upwards of 50% and killing thousands of good jobs in the process,” said Senator Patty Murray of Washington State, vice chair of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, which oversees the budget, in a statement. The committee’s chair, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, noted in a separate statement that science, which is “necessary to maintain U.S. competitiveness,” was a priority in the wide-ranging bills. Notably, the minibus does not cover the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration.

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Under the minibus package, NASA would receive $24.4 billion this year (a slight cut from 2025), with science missions receiving $7.25 billion. That represents just a 1.1 percent dip to science mission funding, in contrast with the 47 percent cut proposed by the Trump administration. Space policy analyst Casey Dreier of the Planetary Society called the bills “very good news” on Bluesky. The budget would preserve NASA missions to Venus, Uranus and the Habitable Worlds Observatory that are meant to search for life on planets orbiting nearby stars, as well as the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is slated for launch next year. The space agency’s long beleaguered $10-billion Mars Sample Return mission would die, however.

With the package, the DOE’s $16.78-billion budget for nondefense programs would include $8.4 billion for its Office of Science, an almost 2 percent increase despite the administration’s calls for cuts. That would include funding for energy efficiency, renewable energy and electric grid protection efforts—as well as fundamental research in physics and chemistry. But the budget for the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy, which funds high-risk energy research, would shrink to $350 million, a 24 percent cut. The Trump administration had wanted an even deeper 57 percent reduction.

“No question the appropriations are a rebuke,” says Michael Lubell, a physicist at the City College of New York and a former director of public affairs at the American Physical Society. “But they are only half the story,” given the Trump administration’s moves to ignore congressional budgets in the past year. To meet its own priorities, the administration has shifted agencies’ money around or refused to spend it, leading to lawsuits. And it has threatened funding at universities—over its opposition to diversity, for example.

“Congress might be expressing its disapproval of the violations of the last year by rejecting Trump’s budget numbers, but until it sees fit to enforce its constitutional authority, not much will change,” Lubell adds.

Editor’s Note: This story is in development and may be updated.

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