IFPTE Tells Lawmakers To Reject Trump Administration's Call to Willingly Abandon American Scientific Leadership at NASA
On Friday afternoon, the Trump Administration’s fiscal year 2026 (FY26) budget request documents for NASA were shared with Congress. The budget request asks Congress to make a massive 47% cut to the NASA Science budget and slash overall NASA funding by 24.4%, resulting in 32% cut to NASA’s federal workforce.
IFPTE’s letter tells the House and Senate Appropriation Committee’s Subcommittee on on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies that “The President’s requested FY26 spending levels for NASA and the NASA Science budget are a call to willingly abandon American ingenuity, scientific leadership, and decades of investment in building a deep well of talent and scientific, engineering, and technical capabilities throughout NASA, the private sector, and academia.””
The Trump Administration had communicated these cuts in a “skinny budget” document sent to Congress in early May and Friday’s detailed budget request makes clear that the Administration is intent on a radical agenda of crippling federal funding for basic research that has given America and American aerospace and science a competitive advantage over other nations and their firms. IFPTE’s letter also reminds lawmakers that the “NASA Science budget informs, impacts, directly supports and integrates into other NASA directorates” and NASA Science missions are “key inputs into NASA's human space exploration, the Moon to Mars Program, and rapid expansion of in-space and on-surface manufacturing.”
The Trump Administration also announced that it was withdrawing the nomination of Jared Isaacman for NASA Administrator, just two days before he was expected to be confirmed for the role by the Senate. Regardless of who is leading NASA, IFPTE is committed to making sure Congress supports robust funding for NASA and increases funding for the NASA Science budget, and disregards a totally unworkable budget that would destroy the world-leading high standard of scientific research and technical research and achievement that NASA has continuously executed.