If you’re old enough to remember Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), you may remember in 2025 just how fast Musk and his small band of tech geniuses identified billions of some of the most insane examples of government waste, fraud, and corruption you can imagine. Some of the most questionable spending was in the area of science, and more specifically at the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Like in 2025, when DOGE said that through the NSF, it canceled 402 “wasteful” diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) grants, which saved $233 million. Included within that number was a savings of $1 million for eliminating a grant for “Antiracist Teacher Leadership for Statewide Transformation.”
Now, for the second consecutive year, President Donald Trump has put together a proposed budget that includes major cuts to NSF, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), NASA, and other science agencies.
According to Scientific American, “Some of the steepest cuts would be made to the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): the budgets of both would fall more than 50% in 2027 compared to their current levels.”
NIH will see cuts totaling 13%. Two of the only areas that have been spared are research projects centered on quantum information and artificial intelligence. The Trump administration said this is “to ensure the United States remains on the cutting edge” in these key places. The White House wants to increase “applied research funding” in those areas at the Department of War (DOW) and the Energy Department, according to Alessandra Zimmermann of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Still, funding for research on basic quantum and AI at NSF will be cut by 37% (quantum) and 32% (AI). In general, the Trump administration seeks to cut the NSF budget by about 55%, from over $8 billion to $4 billion.
As you might expect, the left is having a cow, saying Trump is turning America into a Third World country, all because — in reality — a certain number of influential freeloaders at universities are getting a dose of the real world.
NEWS: Massive budget cuts for US science proposed again by Trump administration
“It’s an extinction-level event for science”.
The US government is proposing massive cuts to almost every branch of science, from NASA to the National Institutes of Health. NSF would completely… pic.twitter.com/lVu5EVa0vH
— Jay Van Bavel, PhD (@jayvanbavel) April 4, 2026
The people hardest hit by these cuts are academics and college campus researchers who are insulated from the same day-to-day pressures you face while they “work” in their ivory towers and summer in Europe. I’m not saying none of them work for a living. But there is “work,” and then there is work. So many grant recipients, many of whom live off of grants that are in the seven, eight, or nine figures, don’t even have to get results. All they need to do is prove they’re studying the thing they say they’re studying.
In 2027, Trump wants to cut all funding for the part of NSF that funds research on the social sciences and economics.
Scientific American reported, “At an internal all-hands meeting on Friday, NSF leaders announced that they would dissolve the agency’s Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) directorate based on the budget request, according to two NSF staff members who shared information anonymously in order to speak freely.”
This only means that the administration wants to eliminate the bureaucracy around the funding. NSF still plans to administer grants “that align with Administration priorities, such as in behavioral and cognitive science,” adding that “all impacted employees will be transferred to other parts of the agency.”
As I’m sure you were wondering, how does all of this affect the field of glaciology? You know, the people who get paid to measure ice and tell you the world is coming to an end because – climate change.
Bad news for the glaciologists of the world. Their gravy train is coming to an end, and they know it. Leigh Stearns, a glaciologist at the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania, told Scientific American that this is all “devastating.” She added, “We cannot cut the pipeline and expect the output to continue. This is how the U.S. loses its scientific leadership — with a reckless budget line.”
Without this money, who will be there to tell us not to use hairspray or drive our trucks?
The bow-tie-wearing pearl-clutchers whose day job it is to run American universities with titles like “chancellor” are so worked up over this that a few have said their Easter brunch was just ruined over the news. They weren’t even in the mood for that second Mimosa.
An ultra-left wing department at an Ivy League university just sent an email to every student and professor announcing an “austerity budget” due to Trump’s budget cuts at NIH and NSF: Fewer grad students, and no more free lunches on taxpayer dime.
Maybe America’s richest… pic.twitter.com/G6NIWp3lwU
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) February 25, 2025
The Association of American Universities (AAU) issued a statement in response that said:
President Trump again has proposed a federal budget for the next fiscal year that would slash investments in American scientific research – including a 12.3% cut to the world’s premier medical research agency, the National Institutes of Health. Such a drastic cut would turn the United States overnight from the world’s unquestioned leader in biomedical research to last place among our competitor nations – reducing the chances that American science cures cancer, Alzheimer’s, or other terminal and debilitating conditions.
Also, the administration’s proposed 54% cut to the National Science Foundation’s budget would severely weaken our nation’s ability to generate new fundamental knowledge and the cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs that have served as the foundation for the development of whole new industries in biotech, information technology, and artificial intelligence.
It would be easier to take all of this more seriously if these university chiefs actually looked to see where that money was going, how it was being spent, and placed a premium on getting results – return on investment for the American taxpayer. But very few, if any of them, can be bothered.
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