During the first Trump administration, Congress repeatedly stepped in to prevent significant cuts to key research agencies like the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). However, this time around intervention by Capitol Hill seems much less likely, according to Alessandra Zimmermann, who heads the R&D budget and policy programme at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
‘It is a very, very different setup now,’ Zimmermann explains. ‘The big difference this time around is that the executive branch appears to have used “impoundment” to take the purse strings from Congress and we’ve seen a lot of noise from the top Democrats on the appropriations committees in the House and the Senate saying what’s the point of doing appropriations if they are no longer actually going to be enacted.’ This is the result of sweeping executive orders directing agencies to withhold funding provided by Congress and signed into law by President Trump, after taking office on 20 January.
I don’t know what is going to come but expect the next month or so to be chaotic
Alessandra Zimmermann, American Association for the Advancement of Science
‘Impoundment’ refers to unilateral action taken by the executive branch – the president and his cabinet – to delay or cancel funding that has been approved by Congress. The concept is very controversial, with many legal scholars arguing that it is contrary to legal precedent and the US constitution. Trump and his allies have asserted that the president has a superseding and inherent constitutional power to refuse to spend – or ‘impound’ – money approved by Congress.
‘Like most things right now, it’s a wait-and-see situation,’ Zimmermann says. Meanwhile, funding allocated for this financial year is still being negotiated in Congress, even though it began about five months ago. The continuing resolution that has been keeping government agencies funded at last year’s level expires on 14 March. That deadline is made more pressing because a US government shutdown will be triggered on that date if Congress cannot reach a resolution on the 2025 budget and is also unable to come to an agreement to keep the government open.
If the government does shut down, she says, all ‘non-essential’ employees will be furloughed and have to wait to receive pay retroactively once the agencies are back up and running. Under such a scenario, no new federal research grants would be awarded and funding that has been committed to existing grants would be frozen, Zimmermann adds.
The last partial US government shutdown occurred in December 2018 due to a standoff between Congress and the White House over $5 billion (£3.9 billion) that President Trump requested in his first term to build a wall along the border with Mexico. That shutdown lasted five weeks and resulted in 90% of the NSF’s total workforce being put on leave. Consequently, the US economy shrank by $11 billion, including $3 billion that was permanently lost, according to a 2019 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
The big problem now is we’re in completely uncharted territory
Alessandra Zimmermann, American Association for the Advancement of Science
Given the current unknowns pervading government-supported research in the US, Zimmermann has increased the number of sources that she’s tracking. For example, she is now monitoring the number of full-time equivalent employees (FTEs) at federal research agencies for the first time ever. Such figures are updated once a year in the president’s budget request and she will provide the research community with this information once Trump releases his 2026 budget request. The dashboard that Zimmermann has prepared tracks FTEs at every R&D intensive agency, including the NSF and NIH, to monitor any reductions in workforce.
The Trump administration has already made a significant number of employees redundant at research agencies. These reductions reportedly include more than 1100 layoffs at the NIH, approximately 6% of its employees, about 1300 workers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, comprising 10% of its workforce, as well as 168 workers at NSF, roughly 10% of its staff.
Zimmermann is also keeping an eye on how grants and contracts are affected by the Trump administration’s new policies. She is monitoring social media to see what researchers are saying, as well as news reports, to gather evidence in this arena. Zimmermann says she is only tracking this information for internal use and is not making it public yet because ‘it is not very quantitative’ or ‘comprehensive’.
‘The current situation for federal research funding is unknown; I don’t know what is going to come but expect the next month or so to be chaotic,’ Zimmermann tells Chemistry World. ‘I will do my best to track it all,’ she continues. ‘I’ve been updating all my historical datasets as well … so that anyone who wants to take a longitudinal look at R&D funding can go ahead.’
Zimmerman says she is aware that people in the research community are desperate for information right now. Her goal is to help provide this data. ‘But the big problem now is we’re in completely uncharted territory,’ Zimmermann says. ‘I’m along for the ride as much as anybody else is.’
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