Resistors

From the Chronicle of Higher Education: The Trump administration’s move to slash science funding has run into a major roadblock: opposition from a key U.S. Senate committee. The Senate Committee on Appropriations voted 19-10... to keep funding for the National Science Foundation and other federal science agencies nearly intact for the 2026 fiscal year. While the budget is still several steps from becoming law, research advocates said they were heartened by lawmakers’ willingness to break with Trump, who has proposed cutting the NSF’s budget by more than half.

The legislation earmarks $9 billion for the NSF, whereas the “skinny” budget proposal Trump put forth in May would have decreased the agency’s coffers to $3.7 billion. The White House’s budget request detailed cuts to “climate; clean energy; woke social, behavioral, and economic sciences; and programs in low priority areas of science,” and noted that the NSF “has fueled research with dubious public value, like speculative impacts from extreme climate scenarios and niche social studies.” ...

By preserving the NSF’s funding, the Senate bill supports “research in critical scientific and technological fields that are necessary to ensure the United States remains competitive with China,” Sen. Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and chair of the committee, said in a news release...

Full story at https://www.chronicle.com/article/trump-proposed-slashing-the-national-science-foundations-budget-a-key-senate-committee-just-refused.