NSF plans to award fewer graduate fellowships in fiscal year 2027
Researchers work in the cell manufacturing laboratory of Krishnendu Roy at Georgia Tech. The National Science Foundation expects to award 1,500 graduate research fellowships in fiscal year 2027, compared with 2,600 awards in fiscal year 2026. Credit:
Rob Felt/Georgia Tech
The US National Science Foundation (NSF) will award fewer graduate research fellowships next year, according to a solicitation posted Aug. 25. The agency says it plans to award 1,500 fellowships, a 42% drop from the record high of 2,600 awards given out in fiscal year 2026 (FY26) and a 25% drop from the 2,000 that have typically been awarded in most other recent years.
The planned reduction in the number of fellows aligns with the NSF’s FY27 budget request (PDF), released back in April, which sets aside $246.54 million for the Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). According to an NSF spokesperson who declined to be named, “the number of fellows supported will be subject to final FY27 appropriations.”
Last year, the Donald J. Trump administration requested $127 million (PDF) for the GRFP, over half of its previously enacted funding level. Congress, however, rejected that proposal and maintained a flat funding level of $285 million for FY26.
In addition to the expected reduction in the number of fellows, students conducting research pertaining to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and learning—including chemistry education—are no longer eligible to apply. Around 1% of all GRFP awards given between FY14 and FY26 have gone to students conducting research in this area, according to publicly available data analyzed by C&EN.
Since Trump returned to office last year, STEM education has been a major target of grant terminations, making up around half of the over 1,400 NSF grants that the agency terminated in May 2025.
Some disciplines within the NSF’s Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate, such as science policy and political science, are also no longer eligible for GRFP awards. “NSF routinely reviews fields of study and makes updates based on changes in the scientific landscape and agency priorities,” the NSF spokesperson says.
All together, these changes further add to an already tumultuous time for the NSF GRFP. The first sign of trouble came when the agency awarded 1,000 GRFP fellowships in FY25, about half the usual annual number. Although it awarded around 500 more fellowships later that year, the total number still fell below the typical 2,000 awards that NSF gives out each year on average. That low number was then partially compensated in FY26 when NSF awarded 2,600 fellowships.
Despite the record number of fellowships in FY26, the agency also unexpectedly changed the program’s eligibility requirements, preventing second-year PhD students from applying to the GRFP, with little warning. Second-year PhD students will also be ineligible to apply this year.
—Krystal Vasquez
Congress pauses OMB grant overhaul and avoids potential shutdown
The US House of Representatives passed a stopgap funding bill Sept. 1, pushing the looming threat of a government shutdown until after the midterm elections. The bill has now been sent to President Donald J. Trump for his signature.
The bill would keep agency budgets at current levels through Dec. 11. It would also prevent the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) from implementing, prior to that date, a proposal that would require political appointees to review and approve research funding before it is awarded.
“This clean, short-term continuing resolution simply keeps the government open, protects the progress we’ve made, and preserves the path to full-year appropriations,” said House Appropriations Committee chair Tom Cole (R-OK) before the vote.
A previous draft of this bill, released by the House back in July, didn’t contain any provisions regarding the OMB proposal. But that version was eventually reconciled with the Senate’s version, which did.
The Senate passed its version of the continuing resolution on Aug. 8.
After the stopgap bill is signed into law, Congress will have just under 100 days to finish finalizing the 12 appropriations bills for FY27. So far, the House has passed 3 of the 12 bills. The Senate has yet to pass any.
—Krystal Vasquez
Federal judge rules in favor of Oregon’s plastics polluter pays law
In a blow to the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors (NAW), a federal judge ruled Aug. 27 that Oregon’s plastics recycling law holding producers responsible for the pollution they cause doesn’t violate the US Constitution.
The ruling was the first made on this type of law, known as an extended producer responsibility or a polluter pays law. These laws hold the producer of the waste material accountable for the cost of the cleanup.
NAW, a trade association representing about 35,000 businesses in the US, filed the case in July 2025 against the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. The association says that the law violates the dormant commerce clause, a legal doctrine that limits the ability of states to pass legislation affecting interstate commerce, as well as the due process clause of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution.
“Oregon’s law forces businesses to join a state-approved Producer Responsibility Organization and pay mandatory packaging fees as a condition of doing business in the state,” the association says in an Aug. 28 statement on the ruling. “NAW’s Legal Policy Center challenged the law because it gives a private, self-interested organization extraordinary fee-setting authority without meaningful oversight or an effective avenue for businesses to challenge its decisions.”
The association says it is challenging similar laws in California and Colorado.
Michael Simon, US district judge of the US District Court for the District of Oregon, said that Oregon’s law does not violate the dormant commerce clause or the due process clause. In passing the law, “Oregon continues to show innovative leadership toward solving serious local, national, and even international problems caused by plastic and other forms of waste and packaging pollution,” he said in the ruling.
Oregon’s Plastic Pollution and Recycling Modernization Act was the first of its kind in the US when it went into effect in 2022. Six additional states, California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington, have since enacted similar laws.
—Leigh Krietsch Boerner
Vance, Zeldin ask EPA IG to investigate East Palestine derailment response
Portions of a Norfolk Southern freight train that derailed the night before burn in East Palestine, Ohio, on Feb. 4, 2023. The nonprofit Government Accountability Project last week released federal records about the accident that it had obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. Credit:
AP Photo
US vice president J.D. Vance and US Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin last week asked the EPA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) to conduct an independent investigation into the Joe Biden administration’s response to the Feb. 3, 2023, Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
The request came days after the nonprofit Government Accountability Project (GAP) obtained more than 900 pages of federal records about the aftermath of the incident through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
According to the GAP, the FOIA records raise questions about whether federal officials withheld or downplayed government modeling that showed potentially significant risks from the decision to intentionally vent and burn five vinyl chloride tank cars.
The derailment breached three tank cars carrying ethylhexyl acrylate, butyl acrylate, and ethylene glycol monobutyl ether. After responders determined that additional cars could rupture if vinyl chloride were to polymerize, Norfolk Southern requested the controlled burn on Feb. 5 and carried it out the following day. The combustion produced hydrogen chloride and carbon monoxide and raised concerns about formation of the highly toxic phosgene.
The National Transportation Safety Board concluded in 2024 that the vent and burn had been unnecessary.
“Troubling media reports have called into question the decision-making behind the Biden-Harris Administration’s response to the derailment . . . [resulting in the] urgent need for an independent review of the decisions and actions taken by federal, state, and private entities in the aftermath of the disaster,” the EPA said in an Aug. 28 press release, without specifically mentioning the GAP.
The request follows an earlier, more limited OIG review initiated by the Donald J. Trump administration in 2025 into the EPA’s response to the derailment. That review focused on the agency’s handling of environmental monitoring and cleanup. EPA officials participated in discussions surrounding the controlled burn but did not order or make the operational decision to carry it out.
Risks to the affected public are ongoing, Erin Haynes, a University of Kentucky professor and lead of the East Palestine Investigation Consortium, tells C&EN. “A comprehensive health study is needed to determine the long-term health consequences of these exposures to the population.”
The EPA did not respond to requests for comment by publication time.
—Joe Beeton, special to C&EN
