White House budget proposal could shatter the National Science Foundation | “This kind of cut would kill American science and boost China.”
https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/02/white-house-budget-proposal-could-shatter-the-national-science-foundation/
28 Comments
From the article: Sometime during the next several weeks, the directors of federal agencies will receive a draft version of President Trump’s budget request for the coming fiscal year, which begins on October 1. This “passback review” is a standard part of the federal budgeting process which ends in Congress writing a budget and the president signing it into law.
The budget request will be the first of President Trump’s second term, and it will offer a clear window into the priorities of his new administration. Although widespread cuts are expected for much of the government’s discretionary spending, the outlook for the National Science Foundation appears to be especially grim.
During an emotional all-hands meeting on Tuesday, the agency’s assistant director, Susan Margulies, told agency employees to expect between a quarter and a half of its staff to be laid off within the coming months, E&E News reported.
On Thursday, two sources told Ars that the science agency should expect to see steep cuts in Trump’s forthcoming budget request. In recent years, the National Science Foundation has received an annual budget of approximately $9 billion, the vast majority of which is spent on research and research-related activities. The cuts could be as deep as 66 percent, with one person indicating the top-line budget number for the National Science Foundation could start at $3 billion.
Such a massive cut is not out of line with a proposal made by Russ Vought for the fiscal year 2023 budget as part of his Center for Renewing America. Vought is expected to become the White House budget director in the coming days. Three years ago, Vought proposed cutting the National Science Foundation budget to $3.9 billion. The cuts, he wrote, would require NSF “to make better decisions and target grants to actual research that will benefit the whole country, not just propagandize for woke ideology.”
wtf is going on in US??? went all in to destroy country and planet?
The sunset on the tax break for millionaires, billionaires and corporations comes due in 2025. The administration is trying to find $ 4T to fund a renewal and additional tax breaks for dt and his billionaire cronies. They will attempt to slash and burn very public service that doesn’t contribute to their bottom line, which means everything that is a public service. The waste they’re trying to find is actually in the Pentagon, where most of these superfluous individuals make their money, which is why DOGE is not investigating the Pentagon, but instead is digging into VA, Medicare, Medicaid, USAID, etc. dt was never looking to provide tax breaks to the poor and middle class, he’s likely going to tax them even more. A revolution is brewing for very good reasons.
What they are doing is treason. Someone needs to step in before they completely destroy this country.
Trump is actively working to destroy the United States. This is obvious.
trump ant about making America great again hes about making his bank account great again…
This is exactly what conservatives want unfortunately. They’re all foreign agents at this point looking to weaken America and the West in every way possible.
Why do we have to fear monger about China in all of these posts? We can recognize how bad these changes are without having to constantly stoke fear of the communist boogieman.
I take “Brain Drain” for 100, Alex.
Coming soon: most terrific primordial soup, formerly known as the USA.
This is also a continued assault on anyone that has a college degree, and a move to privatize information and knowledge. Eliminate information that belongs to the people and giant corps like big pharma get to own more of it. Eliminate the jobs for educated people and you get far fewer educated people.
Totally not a foreign asset guys, this will really own the libs and the woke
Welcome to the decay of the American Empire. We should have figured the cycles would happen faster than previous empires.
As soon as a republican mentions the word woke anymore, the arguement in question falls completely flat. Its like I cant take anybody seriously who resorts to calling anything and everything they dont like as woke.
Also… are we to believe the roughly 6 billion is supppsedly spent on “woke” stuff?!?!
“College kids are so dumb” – my conservative uncle
Think about that statement. As if MORE education some fucking how makes you dumber
[It is all part of their plan.](https://youtu.be/5RpPTRcz1no?si=cPsE6GjT0K4DHVdj)
Destroying the foundation of growth (education, science & health) seems to be his objective.
Who needs those dusty nerds when Dario Adonai promises a bunch of geniuses in a data center 50c a deep thought, dollar an invention.
It is capitalism, baby.
Brain drain is going to hit hard.
> With an annual budget of about $9.9 billion (fiscal year 2023), the NSF funds approximately 25% of all federally supported basic research conducted by the United States’ colleges and universities.
[Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Science_Foundation)
The sad thing is that $9.9 billion per year is a drop in the bucket compared to, say, the **$800 billion** budget of the DoD.
I am so coping but I really hope they don’t pull research funding. But we will see if it happens.
We can just copy China’s homework later like they’ve been doing for forever.
Science proves Trump is wrong and a ‘fool.’ Trump kills the agencies that present scientific evidence. Truth is what he says it is now. Wave good bye to democracy.
The NSF has a budget of only around $10 billion. The US government annual budget is approximately $6.1 trillion dollars; eliminating the NSF entirely would do next to nothing to solve any fiscal issues. The NSF losing its funding isn’t seen as a necessary evil by Trump; he actively wants science to be harmed because science (and education in general) is his enemy.
> not just propagandize for woke ideology
This is ridiculous. What percentage of the NSF’s funding is related, even obliquely, towards “woke” social initiatives? It has to be an extremely low percentage. Using this as an excuse to gut a scientific foundation is silly.
The oligarchs won’t fucking care, their pockets will be lined with our tax dollars.
Tax breaks for the rich is the point. Not sure why there is confusion about why they care about other things
American science was already in steep decline due to for-profit higher education. Couple that with continued defunding of public education to foster new generations of STEM students. And let’s add to that deteriorating economic conditions for the American 90%. You have a series of constricting social sieves that lead to a incredibly small pool of talent. That doesn’t even take into account that most of these privileged kids won’t even go into the sciences; they all gravitate to whatever makes them the most money. Hence, Silicon Valley. An industry that puts profit over actual scientific innovation and discovery.
I’m not saying that everybody needs to become a researcher, but a society that is educated enough to know the value of the scientific method and its problem solving is a much better alternative to the anti-intellectual, fascistic dredge that infects American society right now. The rampant conspiracy theories and reactionary tendencies is what we would equate to medieval peasantry. The regression is measured in centuries at this point.
Doomposting about this phenomenon is easy, but realistically, I don’t see a way we can claw our way out of this death spiral in a timely manner. Even if we magically created a more equitable society and economy yesterday, it might take a generation or two to course correct.
Our current government is incapable of providing this change. One side is a christo-fascist death cult that is controlled by a delusional cabal with an ironic messiah complex, and the other clings to outdated institutions and status quo that created this problem in the first place. Things like “American Exceptionalism” and “The American Dream” are complete emotionally manufactured delusions to give false hope to Americans to chase something that materially doesn’t exist anymore. The faster we can break from this cycle, the faster we can recover and catch up with the rest of the world.
It’s funny how US enemies love everything that’s happening right now…
I like how anything common sense has to be framed in terms of China competition to trigger the inferiority complex of the right to get any kind of bipartisan alignment