The US National Science Foundation, one of the world’s biggest funders of fundamental science, is expected to slash the spending of most of its directorates.Credit: IB Photography/Alamy
The US National Science Foundation (NSF) is planning to expropriate money from its core science programmes to fund an initiative from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), Nature has learnt. The move would strain budgets that are already tight and force the agency to rescind funding for research proposals that are nearly finalized.
NSF staff members — who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation — and an internal NSF ledger seen by Nature suggest that the NSF plans to claw back around US$500 million that has already been distributed to grant-making divisions. That money would be withdrawn from three of the NSF’s eight main areas, or directorates: engineering; computer and information science and engineering; and mathematical and physical science.
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To accommodate the expected funding withdrawal, programme officers, who handle grant proposals, at the three directorates are being required to pull back proposals that have already passed peer review and have been recommended for funding. More than 100 proposals have been affected; many of the researchers who submitted those proposals had already been informally notified of their awards, according to agency staff members.
The revocation of funds would add to the squeeze on the NSF. The US Congress trimmed the agency’s total funding for this year by roughly 3% from 2025 levels, to $8.75 billion, but internal budget numbers seen by Nature indicate that about $1 billion of that money never made it to the directorates.
News of the withdrawal of funds from NSF directorates was first reported by Science, which stated that the funds were going to the NSF X-Labs initiative, a ten-year programme to support technology development.
An NSF spokesperson did not comment on the amount of withheld or withdrawn funds and did not specify how any such funds would be spent. But the spokesperson said that reports of funds being redirected to X-Labs are “simply wrong” and noted that funding does not expire until the end of fiscal year 2027. “Proposals that are received but not awarded remain eligible for future consideration, including in Fiscal Year 2027, unless or until they are declined or returned,” the spokesperson said.
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Several NSF staff members told Nature that at least some of the funds will be funnelled to another project, a brainchild of the White House OSTP.
The OSTP did not respond to Nature’s request for comment. The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has singled out the NSF for “wasteful spending” and a “growing failure of objectivity”.
Dan Reed, a computer scientist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City says that he’s concerned that money will be redirected from peer-reviewed funding channels in the NSF by the White House. Reed was the chair of the National Science Board from 2022 to 2024, which oversaw the NSF until the White House dissolved the board in April.
Looming deadlines
In February, the OMB sent the NSF billions of dollars that the US Congress had appropriated. But when the NSF distributed funding to its directorates in mid-April, it withheld nearly $1 billion of that money, according to an analysis by Nature of internal budget documents. At the time, staff members were not concerned because the agency frequently withholds 10 to 15% of its budget until both the OMB and Congress sign off on a detailed spending plan for the NSF. They usually do so soon after Congress sets the agency’s budget for the year.
With the 2026 fiscal year ending on 30 September, NSF employees are now concerned that the $1 billion of withheld funds will not be released. If they are not, the combination of withheld funds and clawbacks would result in funding cuts of more than 30% for most directorates compared with their planned spending for 2025, according to Nature’s calculations. The exception is the technology, innovation and partnerships directorate, which is still set to receive a boost of around 30% (see ‘Funding shortfalls’).
Source: NSF; Nature analysis
These cuts could pit the White House’s science and budget offices against Congress. In a non-binding document that accompanied the spending bill for 2026, Congress directed the NSF to “equitably distribute funding” and avoid cutting any directorate by more than 5%.
