On May 2, the Trump administration released a budget request for fiscal year 2026 (FY26) that begins on October 1, 2025. As previously and widely leaked, the document includes double-digit percent cuts across science agencies. While concerning, this is only the first step of the annual budget process and there is a saying in Washington that ‘the President proposes, the Congress disposes’, meaning that it will be up to Congress to determine the budget, if they choose to execute this key component of their elected positions.
Historically, the White House budget provides aspirational goals and funding priorities. This document reads more like political propaganda than a meaningful fiscal plan. It includes familiar slogans to ‘Make America Healthy Again’ while cutting the Department of Health and Human Services by 26 percent. There are numerous references to ‘Biden initiatives’ and ‘the previous administration’, suggesting that programs and initiatives were selected for reductions not based on evaluations of effectiveness, but to undo the work of Trump’s predecessor. FABBS is encouraging colleagues on the Hill, who have worked years in service to the federal agencies that serve the health, education, security, and safety of their constituents, to move forward with a deliberate and meaningful process to serve the missions of these agencies and best interest of all.
Overall, the partial, thinly detailed budget proposal calls for a 23 percent, $163 billion cut to nondefense discretionary spending — a sliver, roughly 15 percent, of the $7 trillion federal spending pie. In contrast, the request calls for sizable spending increases on defense and homeland security.
Key agencies funding the behavioral and brain sciences saw significant proposed cuts:
- National Institutes of Health by 37 percent to about $30 billion
- National Science Foundation by 56 percent to $3.9 billion
- Department of Education by 15 percent to $67 billion
[See FABBS Federal Funding Dashboard]
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Trump is proposing a $18 billion cut at NIH, or roughly 37 percent, assuming a $48.5 billion budget for 2024 that included the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) with a $1.5 billion budget. The proposal claims that NIH “has grown too big and unfocused” and “has broken the trust of the American people with wasteful spending, misleading information, risky research, and the promotion of dangerous ideologies that undermine public health.” It recommends restructuring the agency. Some of NIH’s 27 institutes and centers would be merged into five new institutes focused on “body systems,” neuroscience, general medical sciences, disability research, and behavioral health, while other institutes would be eliminated: complementary medicine, nursing, minority health and health disparities, and the Fogarty International Center.
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Trump, who has claimed to be a ‘President who follows science’, proposed shrinking the NSF budget from $9 billion in FY25 to $4 billion in FY26.
The document claims to cut “climate; clean energy; woke social, behavioral, and economic sciences; and programs in low priority areas of science”. The skinny budget would also eliminate all but roughly $200 million from a $1.4 billion portfolio of activities that NSF labels “broadening participation” in science and engineering. FABBS is extremely concerned that the administration intends to target the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate, along with the STEM Education Directorate, in the more detailed budget. FABBS and our member societies are working to educate congressional offices on the value and importance of these disciplines to serve national bipartisan goals in health, safety, and prosperity, among others.
Institute of Education Sciences (IES), US Department of Education (USED)
The proposal does not include specific mention of IES, an office that has been largely dismantled due to layoffs at USED. It proposes significant cuts to USED programs that work to ensure equitable access to education for underserved students and to protect their civil rights. Also cut is the Teacher Quality Partnerships grant, which funds teacher pipeline programs, with the document arguing that the program centers “racism in their pedagogy” by including instruction for aspiring teachers on “social justice activism, ’anti-racism,’ and instruction on white privilege and white supremacy.”
While maintained at current funding levels, special education programs and Title I would be reorganized into separate single grants allowing states to spend the money as they choose. Trump’s budget would boost funding for charter schools by $60 million, one of the few increases proposed.
