NSF slashes research programs to support new tech initiative, insiders say - govt money to cronies

[muriel_volestrangler]

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is trimming this year’s budgets for hundreds of its traditional basic science programs by roughly 20% to 30% even though its overall budget is down just 3%, Science has learned. NSF has not publicly explained the drastic cuts. But sources within and outside the agency, who did not want to be named, say they suspect the goal is to free up funds for a new $1.5 billion initiative, launched last month, meant to turn NSF-funded discoveries into new products and industries.

Last month, when NSF announced plans to give perhaps a half-dozen “X-Labs” as much as $300 million each over 6 years, it did not explain where the money would come from. Rumors have circulated for months that NSF was withholding $1 billion or more of the $8.1 billion Congress approved earlier this year for its eight research directorates. An internal memo obtained by Science documents, for the first time, the extent of those cuts in some fields. NSF declined comment.

The 18 June memo, from the head of a unit within NSF’s math and physical sciences directorate, told program managers that the unit’s budget for this fiscal year, which ends on 30 September, has been cut by 30% from its FY 2025 level of approximately $260 million. “This [cut] will unfortunately affect all [core] programs as well as centers, facilities, and other initiatives. … We are sorry to share this bad news right before the [Juneteenth] holiday weekend.”
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The first set of labs will focus on improved, artificial intelligence–driven instrumentation for sensing and imaging and research on quantum systems and photonics, fields that are priorities for the Trump administration. Awardees will receive $1.5 million in startup funding for the first 9 months, followed by anywhere from $10 million to $50 million per year for the next 5 to 6 years. To cover that commitment, NSF had to find more than $1 billion within an overall FY 2026 budget of $8.8 billion that contained zero dollars for X-Labs.

https://www.science.org/content/article/exclusive-nsf-slashes-research-programs-support-new-tech-initiative-insiders-say

Think about the review process that led to Trump’s pool guy getting the contract to turn the Reflecting Pool into an algae farm. That’s what this process seems to allow: Trump’s political appointees can hand sacks of cash to connected buddies who set up some opaque vehicle through which to launder deploy grant funds.
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One sign that this looks like a bust out rather than a defensible shift in federal priorities is the timeline. Proposals are due in mid-July with, Mervis writes, the first grant funds to flow as swiftly as the autumn. To go from zero to a plausible, well conceived plan for translational research in less than a month from now?
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That’s the direct and devastating attack across the entire spectrum of federal research programs is doing; the looting of the NSF is just the latest blow to US science. Its most immediate impact will be to disrupt current inquiry. Experiments and ideas that would have happened in the coming months or year or two now won’t. That knowledge will be delayed, and may well be found elsewhere, to some other community’s advantage and not ours.
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I’m not sure what to suggest at this point, but calling your House and Senate representatives would be a start—especially as Mervis reports that this redirection of funds is quite possibly illegal, explicitly forbidden in the final FY 2026 appropriation bill approved by Congress.

https://balloon-juice.com/2026/06/22/the-next-bust-out-target-the-nsf/