Hey, I'm Flor Lickman, and you're listening to Science Friday.

Last year around this time, about 30 days into President Trump's second term, we head on Sudip Parique, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the AAAS, on the show.

And he issued this warning.

The United States has been investing in science for 80 years. And we could tear a lot of that down with the stroke of one signature and the votes of

the legislative body. So much has happened since January 2025. So I wanted to take stock. Where are we now with science funding? What has been the

fallout of Doge's early work in 2025? And where does the science research community go from here?

Siddip, thank you for joining us again. Thanks for having me, Flora. What a treat. The pleasure is all mine. Okay, let's start with a temperature check. You know, when we talked to you the last time about a year ago, you sounded worried and you were quite forceful. How are you feeling today? Yeah. Look, damage was done in 2025.

And I want to start by saying that my colleagues in the scientific enterprise, they feel it because of the uncertainty that was there.

They feel it because of grants that were either terminated or slowed down before they finally made it out the door.

They saw it in reduced numbers of students going into the sciences.

So let me just say that up front. That said, the quote that you played is about funding for science.

And we are just about at the point where we're going to finally get final numbers for the U.S. investment in science for fiscal year 2026. And I have to say

it looks really promising. You know, I said that we could change all of that with votes of the

legislative body and the stroke of a pen. Well, the legislative body, our Congress, just released

numbers for a big part of the scientific enterprise,

the National Science Foundation, NASA, other parts of federal funding. And they look good.

What they show is that the bipartisan support for science in Congress is not just still there.

It actually is strong. It is strong. We're going to end up seeing

small increases in some of these agencies. Yeah, let's get into the details. Tell me, break it down for us.

What do we see right now as of this recording? What we're seeing right now, and so that's as of

the time that we're talking, is that Congress has released bills that

fund the National Science Foundation and NASA. Both of those look relatively flat. NASA has a small,

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