NASA Has Been Implementing Huge Budget Cuts That Congress Might Not Actually Make
NASA has been slashing programs all year, including throwing the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) out of its building, asking employees to take buyouts, and defunding some of its most important research centers. Given that the Trump administration's proposed 2026 budget called for a 24% budget cut for NASA, including a 47% cut to its scientific endeavors, this might seem like something the space agency just has to do. Funny thing, though: it's a proposed budget. The actual budget has to be passed by Congress. While we're going to have to wait for the legislature to negotiate an end to the government shutdown, early indications are that it won't end up slashing NASA's budget at all. In other words, all the damage this year might be for nothing.
Space.com has an excellent report on what's been going on, indicating that Trump appointees have been directing NASA to remake itself in the proposal's image. It's a devastating outlook — custom hardware that can't easily be replaced is simply gone, and along with them, key scientists with both deep institutional and technical knowledge. These are potentially permanent blows that can't easily be undone, if at all.
The real tragedy, though, is that this wasn't merely avoidable, it really shouldn't have happened at all. As Space.com's report reveals, much of this was explicitly stated as aligning with the proposed budget. Yet the Appropriations Committees in both the House and Senate — with Republican majorities in both chambers — have already advanced bills that keep NASA funding at last year's level. In other words, Republican Congress has already quietly rejected the Trump administration's proposal. So why are the cuts happening anyway?
In for a penny, in for an impounding
The Trump administration has been moving fast to break stuff in the federal government all year long. A key weapon in that arsenal has been something called "impoundment," in which the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the executive branch agency that's supposed to actually spend the money in a Congressional budget, simply chooses to... not. In September, Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) openly accused OMB Director Russell Vought of using impoundment to execute the proposed NASA budget, even though it is still just a proposal (that Republican Congress seems likely to ignore).
Is that legal? Under any current understanding of the law, the answer is no, as Cantwell states. Of course, questions around impoundment will almost certainly make their way through the courts, and eventually the Supreme Court. Whichever way that goes, in the meantime, Vought is using the procedure like a cudgel. Among others, it's NASA getting bashed.
But we're going to win a Moon race, supposedly
It sure sounds like this administration has it out for NASA. Except, it also seems to believe that America is going to win a race to the Moon against China, put a nuclear reactor on the Moon for its base, and put up new space stations. The theory seems to be that the federal government can cut NASA to the bone and also maintain its status as humanity's premiere space exploration agency. Sounds like even Congressional Republicans aren't buying that.
It's hard to see exactly what the goal is here; one might argue that it seems to be chaos for chaos' sake. Meanwhile, Congress has passed no budget of any kind, so nobody at NASA is getting paid. The Space.com report also mentions that President Donald Trump removed their right to unionize in an executive order earlier this year. Unless there's a radical change in direction, it seems like the agency is going to keep reducing down for the foreseeable future, in ways that cannot simply be fixed.
