Congress says no to the deepest science cuts

Congress is pushing back on the administration’s proposed science cuts, as the NYT and Science report. The Senate’s bipartisan CJS package largely preserves funding across the board — science budgets at NASA and DOE are stable, and a proposed 55% cut to NSF ended up closer to 3%. Earlier this week, Congress also released a compromise LHHS bill that would raise NIH’s budget slightly, rejecting a proposed 40% cut. These numbers track with a Metaculus report we commissioned back in September, in which pro forecasters predicted relatively steady funding for NIH and NSF despite the turmoil; the proposed NIH and NSF budgets are both just shy of forecasters’ 75th percentile predictions for FY26.