Policy Update (18 March 2025)

NASA will be closing three offices, including the Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy; the Office of Chief Scientist; and the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Branch of the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, in response to the Trump administration’s workforce optimization executive order. There are rumors that the White House may seek to cut the budgets for the NASA Science Mission Directorate by up to 50% and the NSF by up to 66%. The AAS issued a response here. With continued pressure from the White House to reduce the size of the federal workforce, two federal judges in California and Maryland ordered that the President must reinstate thousands of probationary employees who lost their jobs. For more details, see: 

• NASA closes offices, lays off staff as it prepares for larger workforce reductions (SpaceNews) 
• White House may seek to slash NASA’s science budget by 50 percent (Ars Technica) 
• White House budget could shatter the National Science Foundation (Ars Technica)
• US judges order Trump administration to reinstate thousands of fired workers (Reuters) 
• What’s Happening in Space Policy 16-22 March 2025 (SpacePolicyOnline) 

Congress avoided a government shutdown and passed a Continuing Resolution (CR) to fund the government for the remainder of FY 2025. While the CR mostly extends the spending levels from FY 2024, there are key changes that increase spending for defense and border security and decrease spending for non-defense programs. The NASA Science Mission Directorate, NSF, and DOE Office of Science were not changed from their FY 2024 levels. You can read more about the funding bill here (AP). 

Last week, the AAS policy team created a new Action Alert that overviews how to submit FY 2026 constituent appropriations requests. Congressional member requests allow your senators and representatives to see what their constituents most care about. It's a numbers game: the more member requests support a particular line item, the better it tends to fare. Not all offices have released their appropriations request forms. If you can't find an FY26 appropriations request form for your senator or representative, we recommend calling their office to ask when the form will be available or reaching out to us. We are asking you to submit funding requests for up to three programs, and the dollar amounts below were created by coalition groups of societies, universities, and professional organizations, including the AAS: 

• National Science Foundation ($9.9 billion) 
• NASA Science Mission Directorate ($9 billion) 
• DOE Office of Science ($9.5 billion) 

The AAS policy team will host a public policy seminar on 19 March from 2:00 to 3:00 pm ET. In this one-hour webinar, we will provide an overview of how Congress works, discuss how you can schedule Zoom or in-district meetings with your congressional offices to advocate on issues that are important to astronomy, and provide tips and best practices for these meetings. Please register using this Zoom link. If you are interested in attending a webinar but can’t make it this time, please reach out to us.

The Division for Planetary Sciences Committee was in town recently to advocate for the planetary sciences on the Hill. They held over a dozen meetings with member offices. The AAS will begin this year’s Congressional Visits Day with 17 participants  in less than two weeks. If you have questions or comments, feel free to email [email protected] or stop by the AAS Policy and Education Office Hours.