A new report by the Trump administration that outlines a model for the future government support for science and technology has drawn heavy criticism from the US scientific community. Entitled Science: A New Golden Age, it emphasizes developments by public-private partnerships at the expense of university-driven research with critics asserting it places politics above science.

The 104-page report aims to update a 1945 document – Science, the Endless Frontier – that was issued by Vannevar Bush, who served as director of the US government’s Office of Scientific Research and Development in the 1940s. The report eventually led to creation of the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 1950.

The 2026 report focuses on how government R&D spending reaches the scientific community and claims that the US research enterprise has become too centred on established research institutions rather than individual researchers.

The report wants the government to significantly reduce the amount and number of grants it gives universities and instead make large investments in industry and non-profits. It also calls for a significantly scale-up of the use of artificial intelligence in science.

“We must renew the R&D enterprise on which our scientific leadership depends,” US science adviser Michael Kratsios and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director Russell Vought write in an accompanying memorandum.

Yet critics says that funding for exploratory science is not the administration’s only target. “It’s very clear that Kratsios/Trump want to destroy universities, or what he calls ‘legacy institutions’,” says public policy expert Shobita Parthasarathy from the University of Michigan. “There is no respect for basic research, which has historically driven innovation in the US [but that] industry won’t fund.”

Neal Lane, former US science advisor who served as NSF director between 1993 and 1998, takes issue with how individual agencies are asked to implement the points raised in the report. “Unlike previous rules, which were uniform guidance, allowing an agency like NSF to set their own rule, the new rule is a binding uniform regulation applying to all agencies as written,” he says.

Lane is also unhappy with the report’s dismissive approach to peer review, which it argues slows down innovation, proposing instead to diversify funding mechanisms with alternatives such as “golden tickets” rapid grants and prize challenges.

“For many decades, expert peer review has been regarded as the gold standard for funding research and publishing the results,” he says. “It is not credible for the administration to claim it supports ‘gold standard science’ without peer review.”

‘Misguided approach’

While some see merit in aspects of the report, or at least a need to rethink the underpinning of scientific research, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) see the administration’s approach as a misguided way to address those challenges. “Reforms must strengthen scientific independence – not weaken it,” an AAUP statement asserts.

That view is echoed by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), which note that while the report calls for a “lighter, faster, and more capable research enterprise”, it says that the to the “uniform guidance that governs how federal grant funding is administered runs counter to that goal”. What a modern-day US Declaration of Independence should say

The report comes as the administration’s proposed budget for financial year 2027, which Congress must approve, would cut overall government spending on R&D by 22%, with support for the NSF slashed by more than 50%, NASA by 23% and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science by 15%. The OMB also proposes guidelines that would allow agencies to terminate grants that “no longer serve agency priorities or the national interest”.

Tess DeBlanc Knowles, a senior director at the US thinktank the Atlantic Council, says US science will be hit badly if those cuts go ahead. “No amount of experimentation can counteract the damaging effects that dramatically reduced funds will have on the foundation of the US’s scientific and technological leadership and ability to train the next generation of scientists,” she says.

• A new report by the American Institute of Physics has found that physics and astronomy PhD graduates are quitting the US in record numbers. The proportion of non-US citizens leaving the US post-degree nearly doubled, from 16% in 2024 to 29% in 2025 – the largest one-year increase since 1997. The report also says about 12% of US citizens post-physics PhD left the US in 2025, compared to just 5% two years earlier.