Federal agencies such as those funding biomedical, physics, and environmental research depend on annual budget decisions from Congress and the White House. When a presidential administration proposes steep cuts, the effects ripple through:

• grant funding for university laboratories;
• support for early-career scientists;
• long-term research programs that depend on multiyear funding stability.

A president's budget request is a starting point, not the final word. Congress writes and passes the actual spending bills, and lawmakers have historically rejected or softened many proposed science cuts from previous administrations of both parties.

What happens next?

The proposal now moves into the congressional budget process, where House and Senate appropriators will decide actual funding levels for the coming fiscal year. Researchers, university leaders, and scientific societies are expected to lobby hard against the reductions, as they did when similar cuts were proposed previously.

SciBeat was unable to access the full text of the original report at publication time; this article is based on the headline and summary information provided by Science | AAAS. We will update this story as details of the proposed cuts — including specific agency budgets and percentage reductions — become available.