Trump’s 2027 budget proposes deep cuts to science programs

Once again, US president Donald J. Trump seeks deep cuts across federal science programs and agencies in his budget request to Congress for fiscal year 2027. White House budget director Russ Vought oversaw preparation of the proposal, which was released on April 3.

The White House’s main priority in this budget request is to supersize the military. Trump is proposing $1.5 trillion for defense, an increase of approximately 40% compared with actual funding in fiscal year 2026. This massive increase in the military budget would be unprecedented since World War II and would come at the expense of most other areas of the federal government. The proposal would cut $73 billion across domestic agencies, including the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and others.

In particular, Trump is targeting programs related to gender and racial equity, as well as programs meant to address climate change and environmental justice, as outlined in fact sheets titled “Cuts to Woke Programs” (PDF) and “Ending the Green New Scam” (PDF).

Congress often departs from the White House’s budget request in its appropriations bills. Lawmakers chose to reject many of Trump’s proposed cuts to federal science funding for fiscal year 2026.

“Once again, we urge lawmakers to deny the steep cuts proposed to federal R&D [research and development] funding in the Administration’s Budget Request for fiscal year 2027. Thanks to bipartisan support, Congress did its job and rejected a catastrophic proposal for FY26, which would have further damaged U.S. global competitiveness,” says Sudip Parikh, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in a written statement released April 3. “Funding should be driven by scientific opportunity and possibility, not politics.”

Until appropriations bills for fiscal year 2027 take shape, here’s how some of the country’s main science agencies would fare under the White House budget request.

National Science Foundation

Trump is requesting to limit the National Science Foundation’s budget to $4 billion, a 54.5% reduction from the agency’s $8.8 billion budget in fiscal year 2026. The NSF did not garner its own section in the budget request as in past years, with details of the proposed cuts simply laid out in tables in an appendix.

The proposal would cut funding for the mathematical and physical sciences, which include chemistry, to $515 million in fiscal year 2027, compared with $1.562 billion spent in 2025 and an estimated $1.324 billion to be spent in 2026. Funding for the biological sciences would be cut to $225 million (compared with $801 million spent in fiscal year 2025), for engineering to $185 million (compared with $749 million in fiscal year 2025), and for the geosciences to $426 million (compared with $1.028 billion in fiscal year 2025).

“The administration’s proposed 54% cut to the National Science Foundation’s budget would severely weaken our nation’s ability to generate new fundamental knowledge and the cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs that have served as the foundation for the development of whole new industries in biotech, information technology, and artificial intelligence. Indeed, continued support for NSF and the scientific research it supports is critical to our national security and economy,” the Association of American Universities writes in a statement.

One area of new funding would be $100 million given to the NSF for a joint effort with the Department of Energy (which would receive $75 million) to improve energy and water security in US regions experiencing high energy use and drought.

Environmental Protection Agency

The White House proposal would chop $4.6 billion from the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget, down 52% compared with enacted fiscal 2026 levels and the lowest level since the Ronald Reagan administration in the 1980s. Bearing the brunt of the cuts are programs on research and development, climate change, environmental justice, Superfund cleanup, and state funding.

Under the 2027 budget, research and development would get $277 million for legally required research. This would put “an end to unrestrained research grants, woke environmental justice work, radical climate research, and skewed, overly-precautionary modeling that influences regulations.”

The EPA’s environmental justice programs, which have already seen heavy cuts and defunding, would be fully eliminated under this budget. Likewise, the atmospheric-protection program, called the climate-protection program under President Joe Biden, would be completely eliminated. The White House justifies this elimination in the proposed budget, writing, “By prioritizing the cult of ‘climate change’ over job creation and energy independence, the program has burdened American industries with costly mandates.”

Like last year’s White House budget request, this proposal would cut over $1 billion in categorical grant programs, which help states implement and enforce federal environmental laws, such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, and slash $2.5 billion from state revolving loan funds. The EPA’s Superfund hazardous waste program, which focuses on cleaning up the nation’s most contaminated sites, would also lose funding, although the budget did not specify how much.

“This EPA budget proposal leaves families sicker, not safer,” Michelle Roos, executive director of the Environmental Protection Network, an environmental advocacy group, says in an April 3 statement. “Because some politicians in Washington don’t support EPA’s mission of protecting human health, many communities across the country have lost the EPA pollution inspectors and experts that have protected families from harm,” she says.

These cuts mirror the 2026 proposed White House budget, which ultimately did not go into effect. In January, Congress passed a budget that cut the EPA’s funding by 3.5% compared with 2025.

National Institutes of Health

At the National Institutes of Health, the country’s largest research agency, the budget proposal would cut spending by approximately 10.5%, to $41.3 billion.

The White House proposes to eliminate 3 of the NIH’s 27 institutes and centers, including those focused on minorities, international health, and complementary and integrative health. (This cut was proposed last year but did not come to pass.)

A detailed appendix (PDF) also includes proposals to zero out the budget for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and to combine institutes focused on alcoholism and drug abuse. The separate, coadministered Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) would shrink by 37% (PDF).

Last year, legislators sent the NIH much more money than the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) requested. Advocates are hoping for a repeat. Jeremy Berg, a former director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, says in a social media post about the budget proposal, “I hope and expect that this will be dead-on-arrival in Congress.”

But whatever amount Congress appropriates must also be spent if it is to support researchers. According to a March 24 analysis by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the NIH has committed much less of its budget for the current fiscal year than would normally be expected. Sarah Kobrin, a National Cancer Institute branch chief speaking in a personal capacity, told C&EN earlier this year that “we can’t even trust that what they signed will actually happen.”

Overall, HHS requests $110.5 billion in funding, a 12.5% cut from what was appropriated for fiscal year 2026. It also proposes once again to launch a new agency within HHS, the Administration for a Healthy America, with authority to spend $17.2 billion and take over some health services from other agencies.

Food and Drug Administration

A variety of sources fund the US Food and Drug Administration, including various appropriations acts and industry fees. Its drug and device programs are powered largely by user fees, payments manufacturers make to the agency when they submit new products for review. About half of the FDA’s budget comes from user fees, according to the White House proposed budget; the rest comes from taxpayer dollars.

For fiscal year 2027, the proposal allocates $7.2 billion to the FDA, a $232 million increase from the prior year. Much of that is meant to be spent on programs aligned with the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda, including $57 million to strengthen the agency’s food-safety programs.

The White House has also proposed spending $71 million to establish a new user fee that would authorize the FDA to collect payments from foreign facilities that process food consumed in the US. The proposed budget suggests that the new fee would bring in an additional $1 billion a year.

Department of Energy

The budget proposal would shift the Department of Energy toward nuclear weapons and “firm baseload power” at the expense of renewables and energy efficiency. Overall funding for the agency would rise by about 10%, with a $3.6 billion increase for work on the US nuclear arsenal, $3.5 billion for rapid deployment of electrical generation not using wind or solar, $1.1 billion for a set of seven artificial intelligence supercomputers at US national labs, and $469 million for critical-mineral extraction and energy-water infrastructure.

An appendix to the proposal defines firm baseload power as sourced from coal, natural gas, hydroelectric, geothermal, and nuclear power facilities.

Those increases would be offset by cancellation of $15.2 billion in funding for renewables and carbon capture and a cut of $1.1 billion at the DOE Office of Science. In addition to the cuts, the proposal calls for the Office of Science to move resources from climate change research toward advanced biotechnology and AI. It also would cut US participation in Iter, an experimental fusion reactor being built in France by an international coalition, and move those funds to domestic nuclear fusion research.

The net effect is a 12.4% budget increase for nuclear weaponry and an 11.2% cut for the rest of the DOE’s operations. The DOE section also proposes a government-wide ban on the use of federal funds to subscribe to or publish in academic journals.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

The White House budget proposal includes $1.6 billion in cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. These cuts include NOAA educational grant programs that have “consistently funded efforts to radicalize students against markets, promote DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion], and spread baseless environmental alarm,” according to the proposal. Programs that allegedly caused harm to US fishing industries and focused on workforce development would also be eliminated.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

For a second year, the Trump administration is proposing large cuts to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration budget (PDF). The budget requests $18.8 billion for the agency, a 23% reduction from what NASA received in fiscal year 2026.

If enacted, NASA’s science mission directorate would see the greatest reduction at $3.4 billion, 47% less than was appropriated by Congress last year. The budget request (PDF) mentions over 40 missions slated for termination but identifies only two: the Mars Sample Return mission and the SERVIR program.

Mars Sample Return aims to bring already collected Martian rock samples back to Earth for in-depth analysis. The budget request labels it as too costly and redundant with future human missions to Mars.

The SERVIR Global Collaborative is a global alliance that uses NASA Earth satellite data to help international communities prepare for and respond to climate hazards. The budget request states that SERVIR “imposed climate extremism on developing countries” and so should be cut.

In addition to cutting NASA’s science program, the administration also proposes eliminating $1.1 billion from the International Space Station and $297 million from technology development, specifically focusing on in-space sustainability projects and a project to develop a nuclear-thermal rocket engine. It would also terminate the Office of STEM Engagement and all its programs and projects.

Unsurprisingly, NASA’s moon missions are some of those highlighted in the budget proposal. The budget proposes investing $731 million to land astronauts on the moon by 2028, bringing funding for the Artemis program to $8.5 billion. It also adds $175 million to programs for establishing a lunar base camp. Finally, the administration proposes replacing the current Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule used in the Artemis program with more cost-effective systems.