Which political celebration supplies extra federal funding for science? Given climate-denial rhetoric, assaults on experience, the dimensions of presidency, and culture-war battles over analysis, many People could consider that Democrats help science and that Republicans don’t.
However this isn’t what we have now discovered. In analysis revealed final fall in Science with our colleagues Nic Fishman and Leah Rosenstiel, we analyzed a complete database of federal science appropriations, collected from presidents’ funds requests, from Home and Senate committee payments, and from ultimate, enacted annual appropriations from 1980 to 2020. The info embrace 171 funds accounts throughout 27 businesses, equivalent to Nationwide Institutes of Well being, NASA, Nationwide Science Basis, and CDC, in addition to Pentagon R&D applications.
When Republicans managed the Home or the presidency, science funding was considerably larger—on common, about $150 million extra per funds account underneath a Republican Home than a Democratic one, and $100 million extra underneath a Republican president than a Democratic one. These variations held up throughout dozens of statistical checks and weren’t defined by the general dimension of the funds or financial situations. We discovered considerably larger appropriations for NIH underneath Republican management, larger funding for CDC underneath Republican presidents, and marginally larger help for NASA and NSF.
For the previous yr, we have now questioned if our paper had documented one thing purely historic—a sample from a Republican Get together that not exists. The Trump administration proposed slashing NIH by about 40 %. It tried to cap indirect-cost restoration—the portion of federal grants that reimburses universities for bills equivalent to services, compliance, safety, and gear—at 15 %, threatening billions in analysis infrastructure. It stalled grants; cleared out company management; imposed political approval necessities on funding choices, equivalent to requiring senior political appointees to log off on grants earlier than they could possibly be awarded and terminating applications addressing racial well being gaps; and carried out focused funding freezes at specific universities. The postwar compact between authorities and science gave the impression to be collapsing.
However Congress—underneath Republican management in each chambers—has systematically rejected the administration’s most excessive proposals.
Within the funding invoice that President Trump signed into regulation this month, lawmakers not solely declined to chop NIH’s funds by 40 %; they as an alternative elevated it by roughly $415 million. They added focused funding for most cancers analysis, Alzheimer’s illness, and the BRAIN Initiative for the event of neurotechnologies. The ultimate quantity: $48.7 billion—just about unchanged from the prior yr.
Simply as necessary, Congress included detailed language constraining govt overreach. It reiterated that NIH can’t unilaterally change how indirect-cost charges work. It restricted the company’s skill to shift funds towards multiyear awards that crowd out new grants. It required month-to-month briefings to Congress on grant awards and terminations to make sure the allotted cash is definitely being distributed. And it directed NIH to proceed to professionalize the hiring of institute administrators, with exterior scientific enter and congressional oversight.
Related patterns maintain elsewhere. NASA faces a 1.6 % reduce fairly than the 24 % the administration sought. The NSF funds dropped 3.4 % as an alternative of 57 %.
The funds accounts within the database we analyzed monitor the recurring working bills allotted throughout all elements of the federal authorities for science and analysis, together with science finished by means of grant-making and contracting with companies. They don’t comply with outgoing grants to researchers straight, so the numbers don’t seize the sorts of funding freezes the Trump administration imposed on universities together with Harvard, Columbia, and Penn.
Even so, the Republican-led Congress behaved way more like our information predicted than like what Trump requested. The appropriators funded science, protected analysis infrastructure, and asserted management over how businesses function. On this regard, they did what Republicans in Congress have finished for many years.
The Trump administration’s hostility to science is actual and deeply regarding. However it has not—up to now—reset the Republican Get together’s place on science funding in the way in which that Trump reshaped GOP stances on commerce, immigration, or overseas alliances.
Science funding in the USA has been sustained not simply by partisan enthusiasm but additionally by institutional construction. In our information, funding tracked with management of the Home and the presidency, however not the Senate. That’s as a result of the Home majority controls the appropriations course of. And Republican appropriators appear to have as soon as once more funded science not regardless of their priorities however due to them. Financial competitiveness, technological management, and nationwide safety all relaxation on a basis of scientific development.
This consequence appeared inconceivable six months in the past—to many, together with us, it seemed practically unimaginable. This wasn’t a traditional coverage disagreement. It was a stress check. And the establishment is holding. The 2026 funding bundle highlights the dedication of the Republicans in Congress to persistently fund science.
Staffing losses are actual, management vacancies create drift, and political interference in grant choices stays a critical menace. Budgets alone don’t assure a functioning analysis system. However treating the GOP as monolithically anti-science dangers alienating a coalition that has traditionally sustained federal analysis. Scientists who need to defend funding ought to spend much less time lamenting Republican hostility and extra time partaking Republican appropriators—significantly within the Home, the place the funding choices get made.
Science got here underneath assault, and a Republican Congress pushed again. That’s not an aberration.
