Exploring the moon while cutting NASA? Why Trump’s 2027 budget misfires
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The oldest, most enduring cliche about government policy is the one about how budgets are political, not fiscal, documents.
The Trump administration’s budget proposal for the 2027-28 fiscal year, unveiled Friday, seems designed to set a new standard for partisan ideology as a spending standard.
You may have seen news coverage of the budget’s top lines, which call for $1.5 trillion in defense spending next year and cuts totaling $73 billion in nondefense spending. But those figures fail to communicate the raw flavor of the budget cuts or how they’re described in the 92-page document.
It’s an extinction-level event for science.
— Casey Dreier, Planetary Society, on budget cuts at NASA
Nor do they provide perspective for the magnitude of the defense increase or the damage that would be wreaked upon crucial social programs.
The defense request, for instance, would be a 42% increase over the current year, but it might be better judged as what Todd Harrison of the pro-business American Enterprise Institute describes unhappily as “the highest level of funding for defense in US history, surpassing even the peak funding during World War II.”
Adjusted to today’s dollars, Harrison calculates, the World War II peak was a bit lower than $1.2 trillion.
The administration minimizes the overall budgetary effect of its spending plans by projecting average growth in gross national product at 3% annually over the next decade.
That’s an ambitious goal, to say the least. Over the last 25 years — that is, in this century — U.S. economic growth has reached or exceeded 3% in only three years, including a pandemic-era surge to 6.1% in 2021. Last year it was only 2.1%.
On the other side of the ledger, the nondefense budget would be cut by 10%. But programs the White House has specifically targeted for being contrary to its ideology would suffer far more devastating cuts. Some scientific programs, such those concerned with global warming or the social and economic implications of science, technology and healthcare policies would be slashed by more than 50%.
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NASA may be enjoying a moment just now, as its Artemis II spacecraft rounded the far side of the moon Monday, preparatory to heading back to Earth in the first moonshot since Apollo 17 last landed men on the lunar surface in December 1972.
But Trump proposes slashing the agency’s budget by $5.6 billion, or 23%. It gets worse: Trump would cut NASA’s science division by $34 billion, or 47%, canceling more than 40 projects, of which about 20 are currently underway.
“It’s an extinction-level event for science,” Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the Planetary Society, told Nature.
Among the programs facing extinction is NASA’s Office of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Engagement, which aimed to interest minority students in those so-called STEM disciplines.
“NASA will inspire the next generation of explorers through exciting, ambitious space missions,” the budget says, “not through subsidizing woke STEM programming and research that prioritizes some groups of students over others.”
The budget leaves unclear how those “exciting, ambitious space missions” will come to pass, since it also cuts $297 million from NASA’s annual spending on space technology.
The proposed cuts to science programs more generally would be devastating. The National Science Foundation, one of the most important scientific grant-making agencies in the world, would lose $4.8 billion, or 55% of its funding.
The language the budget uses to rationalize such cuts speaks volumes about the drivers of its draconian cuts in nondefense spending: It’s an expression of Trumpian culture war hobby horses such as hostility to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. The term “woke” or its derivatives appear 32 times in the budget document — as many times as it appears in Project 2025, the far-right roadmap for a second Trump term published by the Heritage Foundation in 2023.
The $8.5 billion in proposed budget cuts to K-12 spending would include the elimination of the $70-million Teacher Quality Partnership, which the budget describes as a program to “train teachers ... on divisive ideologies.”
The signals of a weakening economy may still be only faintly felt by most Americans — and most sharply by lower-income households — but they’re no secret to business leaders.
Among those, the budget says, are “inappropriate and divisive topics such as Critical Race Theory, diversity, equity, and inclusion, social justice activism,” and “anti-racism.” Nothing in the document explains why any of those things are considered bad; the terms are merely shibboleths that Trump’s core audience is expected to accept as gospel.
Services for transgender individuals would take a major hit from the budget: Among the $204.5 million in Treasury Department funding for community development initiatives on the chopping block would be support for “gender extremism,” such as for clinics that provide “‘gender-affirming hormone therapy’ and other services to young patients.”
As I’ve reported, Trump has bought heavily into conservative attacks on gender-affirming care, including by spouting claims that I labeled in 2024 as “deranged and despicable,” such as that schoolchildren are being kidnapped by school administrators and subjected to surgery against their will.
Perhaps the most concentrated assault in the proposed budget, as my colleague Hayley Smith reported, is the one aimed at research, development, and construction of renewable energy sources. The budget plan contains no fewer than 20 references to what it calls the “green new scam.”
This is an infantile reference to what’s typically known as the “Green New Deal,” a raft of policies incorporating a transition from fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal to renewables as well as the concept of “environmental justice,” meaning efforts to ensure that the transition doesn’t overly burden disadvantaged communities.
Trump has consistently called for more development of fossil sources, including a revival of coal despite its unrelenting and inevitable glide path toward extinction as a component of U.S. energy generation. The budget plan doubles down on this policy, calling renewables R&D a “leftist” ideology. This is tied to policies “opening up more Federal land and waters for oil, gas, and clean coal development,” the document says. (“Clean coal,” which is to say nonpolluting coal, is a myth, as I’ve reported.)
The budget plan pays tribute to another Trump obsession, the supposed evils of wind power. Cuts to the Interior Department budget would “put a stop to disastrous offshore wind energy projects that harm hardworking coastal communities, precious wildlife, and American military readiness.” None of these assertions about wind power is supported by reality.
Some cuts appear to reflect a determination to exact retribution from agencies that have thwarted cherished conservative goals. The National Institutes of Health, a consistent target of conservative budget-cutters, would lose $5.9 billion, or 12.5% of its budget. That would include major cuts to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which was formerly headed by the respected immunologist Anthony Fauci.
NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatories have produced groundbreaking data about global warming and crop health. Trump wants the observatories destroyed by burning them up in the atmosphere — but why?
The budget drafters couldn’t resist taking a swipe at Fauci, who has been the target of smears from Republicans who have tried to blame him, absurdly, for the COVID pandemic. The budget document accuses Fauci of steering government funds to the Wuhan (China) Institute of Virology, which it called “the likely source of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
There’s no compelling evidence that a laboratory was a source of the virus, as I’ve documented: The overwhelming weight of scientific judgment is that the virus reached humans from natural zoologic sources. The budget plan resurrects the long-debunked conspiracy theory that Fauci orchestrated a 2020 scientific paper that judged the lab-leak theory to be “improbable.” The budget drafters assert that Fauci (who retired in 2022) “commissioned” the paper, which is simply untrue.
Another theme percolating through the budget plan is the need to protect our wealthiest taxpayers from, well, taxes. The budget would cut $1.4 billion from the budget of the Internal Revenue Service, reversing a restoration of the agency’s enforcement capabilities undertaken during the Biden administration. Trump cut IRS staffing by 20,000, or 27%. The document asserts that the IRS “has been weaponized against the American people, small businesses, and non-profit organizations.”
According to the Yale Budget Lab, every dollar the IRS spends on audits yields more than $7 in returns. Plainly that’s not coming from average Americans, but from the upper crust.
None of this means that the budget proposal isn’t valuable, to an extent. It’s a convenient one-stop window into Trump’s personal fixations: the elimination of “radical gender and racial ideologies that poison the minds of Americans,” the horrors of “the globalist climate agenda,” the “invasion” of violent criminals from abroad, and so on. In other words, there’s nothing new under the Trumpian sun.
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Ideas expressed in the piece
The Trump administration’s 2027 budget proposal prioritizes defense spending at historically unprecedented levels, requesting $1.5 trillion in defense funding, representing a 44 percent increase and surpassing even peak spending during World War II when adjusted for inflation[4][6]. This massive defense expansion comes at the direct expense of scientific research and social programs, reflecting the administration’s assessment of national security priorities.
The budget represents what the article characterizes as an “extinction-level event for science,” with NASA’s science division facing a 47 percent cut ($3.4 billion reduction), the National Science Foundation losing 55 percent of its funding, and the National Institutes of Health experiencing a 12.5 percent reduction, collectively threatening over 40 scientific missions and research programs[1][4][6]. These cuts would eliminate crucial scientific initiatives including climate research, renewable energy development, and programs designed to foster STEM education among underrepresented students.
The budget document employs ideological language centered on cultural issues rather than fiscal justification, using terms like “woke,” “Green New Scam,” and “DEI” extensively throughout to rationalize cuts to programs addressing climate change, renewable energy, diversity initiatives, and gender-affirming healthcare services. This framing suggests the budget prioritizes ideological goals over evidence-based scientific and policy considerations.
The proposal would cut $297 million from NASA’s technology development, specifically targeting space sustainability projects and nuclear-thermal rocket development, while simultaneously proposing to replace the Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule with unspecified “more cost-effective systems,” raising questions about the coherence of the administration’s space exploration strategy[4].
Different views on the topic
The administration argues that the 2027 budget recalibrates federal spending to focus on top research priorities including artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and national defense, with the National Science Foundation’s remaining $4 billion in funding directing $655 million to AI research and $231 million to quantum computing as strategic investments[6]. These priorities reflect a judgment that concentrated funding in emerging technologies serves long-term American competitiveness.
The budget maintains substantial support for NASA’s Artemis program with $8.5 billion in total funding, including $731 million for lunar landings and $175 million for establishing a lunar base, demonstrating continued commitment to accelerated moon exploration goals[2][7]. NASA’s own statements indicate alignment with these priorities, announcing an aggressive schedule targeting Artemis III for 2027 and at least one surface landing annually thereafter, with plans for commercial lunar landings every six months[3].
The administration justifies cuts to environmental and climate research programs by framing them as counterproductive to energy independence and economic growth, proposing instead to redirect funding toward fossil fuel development and “energy dominance” as a path to affordable energy and job creation[2][4][5]. This reflects a different assessment of which energy policies best serve the national interest compared to the clean energy focus of previous administrations.
The budget proposal prioritizes national security investments in space, including full funding for the Golden Dome missile defense initiative with space-based sensors and interceptors, representing what the administration characterizes as essential protection of “America’s vital national and economic security interests in, from, and to space”[2].
