By Kritika Agarwal
On Tuesday, February 3, the House passed, and President Trump signed into law, a five-bill FY26 spending package, ending a partial government shutdown. With the passage of these five bills, Congress has now passed 11 out of 12 FY26 appropriations bills (the FY26 Homeland Security bill still remains outstanding). The bills fund most scientific research agencies at much higher levels than President Trump proposed in his FY26 budget request, avoiding the draconian cuts to federal research funding that many in the scientific community had feared.
Here are the final outcomes for some of the key federal science agencies and higher education programs that AAU tracks:
- National Institutes of Health: Congress provided $47.2 billion for the National Institutes of Health for FY26 (a 3% increase from FY25), as well as $1.5 billion for the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). (The president had proposed a nearly 40% cut to the NIH in his budget.)
- National Science Foundation: For FY26, Congress provided $8.75 billion for the National Science Foundation (a 3% cut from FY25, but less than the 56% cut the president had proposed).
- NASA: Congress provided $7.25 billion for NASA Science (a 1% cut from FY25, but less than the 47% cut proposed by the president).
- Department of Energy: Congress provided $8.4 billion for the DOE Office of Science (a 2% increase from FY25; the president had proposed cutting it by 14%) and $350 million for the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (a 24% cut from FY25, but less than the 57% cut included in the president’s budget proposal).
- Department of Defense: Congress provided $838.7 billion in total funding to the Department of Defense ($8.4 billion more than President Trump had requested in his budget). It included $145.9 billion for the department’s research, development, testing, and evaluation functions.
- Department of Education: For FY26, Congress provided $79 billion in discretionary funding to the Department of Education (the president had proposed $66.7 billion). It also maintained the annual Pell Grant maximum award at $7,395 for the 2026-27 academic year and provided sustained funding for Federal Work-Study programs, the Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant, and TRIO. Additionally, it provided $790 million for the Institute of Education Sciences.
- Agriculture and Food Research Initiative: Congress provided $435 million for AFRI (a 2% cut from FY25, but less than the 9% cut proposed by the president).
- National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts: Congress provided level funding at $207 million for both these agencies; the president had proposed to eliminate them altogether.
AAU released a statement last week thanking Congress for, on a bipartisan basis, rejecting the administration’s proposed cuts to key scientific research agencies and for “including small increases to the budgets of the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy Office of Science and for staving off large proposed cuts to funding for the National Science Foundation, NASA Science, and basic research at the Department of Defense.”
AAU also thanked Congress “for prioritizing investments in education, including the Pell Grant program, which helps millions of low- and middle-income students access college, and for its continued support for the humanities and the arts.”
Several of the bills passed by Congress also included provisions that prevented various federal agencies from modifying or implementing changes to indirect cost negotiated rates. A compilation of all legislative language related to indirect costs in FY26 spending bills is available on the AAU website.
The Joint Associations Group (JAG) on Indirect Costs (of which AAU is a key part) also released a statement thanking Congress and appropriations leaders for including language in several appropriations bills that will help advance the JAG’s recommendations concerning the Financial Accountability in Research (FAIR) model this year.
Kritika Agarwal is assistant vice president for communications at AAU.