A 104-page White House report proposing a fundamental restructuring of US government support for science would sharply cut grants to universities, redirect large investments toward industry and non-profits, and sideline peer review — a blueprint that landed alongside a fiscal 2027 budget request cutting overall federal R&D spending by 22%, including a reduction of more than 50% at the National Science Foundation.

Entitled Science: A New Golden Age, the report updates a 1945 document — Vannevar Bush's Science, the Endless Frontier, which led to the creation of the NSF in 1950. Where Bush's framework built an academic research enterprise, the new report argues that government R&D spending has become too centred on established research institutions rather than individual researchers. It calls for government to significantly reduce the amount and number of grants given to universities, to make large investments in industry and non-profits, and to scale up substantially the use of artificial intelligence in science.

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

The proposals carry direct consequences for R&D managers at every US university: the OMB also proposes guidelines that would allow agencies to terminate grants that "no longer serve agency priorities or the national interest" — a clause that introduces political discretion into portfolio decisions previously governed by scientific merit.

Binding rules, not guidance

Critics focus on implementation mechanics as much as funding philosophy. Neal Lane, former US science adviser and NSF director from 1993 to 1998, notes that the report converts previous practice into hard regulation. "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 also challenges the report's dismissive treatment of peer review, which it argues slows innovation. The report proposes diversifying 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," Lane says. "It is not credible for the administration to claim it supports 'gold standard science' without peer review."

The Federation of American Scientists makes a procedural argument: while the report calls for a "lighter, faster, and more capable research enterprise", its changes to the uniform guidance governing federal grant administration run counter to that goal.

Political intent alleged

Some observers concede aspects of the report merit debate, or at least that the underpinnings of US research warrant rethinking. The American Association of University Professors does not. "Reforms must strengthen scientific independence — not weaken it," an AAUP statement asserts.

Shobita Parthasarathy, a public policy expert at the University of Michigan, reads political intent into the document. "It's very clear that Kratsios/Trump want to destroy universities, or what he calls 'legacy institutions'," she says. "There is no respect for basic research, which has historically driven innovation in the US [but that] industry won't fund."

Her point cuts to a core portfolio question for R&D managers: industry funds applied and near-market work, not exploratory science. A shift of public money toward public–private partnerships would leave basic research — the pipeline that produces the questions industry later commercialises — without a patron.

Budget context

The report arrives as the administration's proposed FY2027 budget, which requires congressional approval, targets a 22% cut in overall government R&D spending: more than 50% at the NSF, 23% at NASA and 15% at the Department of Energy's Office of Science. Tess DeBlanc Knowles, a senior director at the Atlantic Council, says the damage would exceed anything structural reform could offset. "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.

One indicator of how researchers are already responding: a new report by the American Institute of Physics found that physics and astronomy PhD graduates are leaving the US in record numbers. The proportion of non-US citizens leaving the country after their degree nearly doubled, from 16% in 2024 to 29% in 2025 — the largest one-year increase since 1997. About 12% of US citizens left the US after a physics PhD in 2025, compared with 5% two years earlier.

None of the report's proposals takes effect automatically. Congress must still approve the FY2027 budget, and the binding regulations implementing the new funding rules will face the agencies — and, almost certainly, legal and institutional challenges — before the shape of the "golden age" becomes clear.