AI Insight
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has cut budgets for hundreds of basic science programs by up to 30% for fiscal year 2026, with the math and physical sciences directorate losing 30% of its $260 million budget and the biology directorate losing $200 million. Internal memos instructed program managers to halt award recommendations and refrain from communicating the changes to researchers. These cuts appear intended to fund X-Labs, a new $1.5 billion initiative for independent research teams, despite the overall NSF budget decreasing by only 3% and congressional language limiting directorate cuts to 5% relative to 2024 levels.
Why it matters
These budget cuts have already reduced new grant awards to one-eighth of 2025 levels, severely disrupting ongoing research projects and career pathways for scientists across multiple disciplines. The reallocation contradicts congressional appropriations directives and represents a significant shift in NSF priorities away from investigator-initiated basic research toward a centralized initiative using non-standard funding mechanisms.
Understand the Science
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Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news regarding law and policy changes that impact science and scientists today.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has slashed budgets for hundreds of its basic science programs for the remainder of this fiscal year, according to an 18 June memo obtained by Science.
The memo informs program managers within a unit of NSF’s math and physical science directorate that their budget for this fiscal year, ending 30 September, has been cut by 30% from the FY2025 level, which was $260 million. The memo also asks NSF program managers to “pull back any award recommendations in the queue,” and refrain from informing potential and current principal investigators (PIs) and other grantees about the changes: “Please do not communicate anything to PIs,” the memo states.
Comparable cuts were made within many other NSF units, including the biology directorate, which received a budget cut of $200 million.
Sources who preferred not to be named told Science they suspect that the budget cuts are part of an effort to make funds available for a new NSF initiative called X-Labs. The new initiative is a $1.5 billion program that would award “independent teams of researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs” funding to “tackle challenges that were difficult to pursue in conventional academic and industry labs,” a May announcement about it states.
NSF will fund X-Labs through a mechanism called Other Transaction Authority, which allows the agency to issue funding outside of standard grants or cooperative agreements. The overall FY2026 budget did not contain funding for X-Labs; NSF officials expanded the program and accelerated its launch.
The cuts to basic science programs come during a time of turbulent changes at NSF. This year, the agency has awarded just an eighth of the number of new grants that were awarded in 2025, despite the overall NSF budget being just 3% less, according to Grant Witness.
In April, the Trump administration eliminated the entire board that directs and approves funding decisions for NSF, and in May, it eliminated postdoctoral funding for Earth scientists. Trump’s FY2027 budget request, announced in May, would reduce NSF’s science and research budget by more than half.
—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer
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Source: NSF Cuts Hundreds of Science Program Budgets by Up To 30%