Senate Democrats have announced a legislative push that resuscitates and expands on provisions omitted from last year’s CHIPS and Science Act that address the U.S.–China rivalry. They expect their effort will include proposals for targeted R&D funding and new controls aimed at preventing China from exploiting U.S. technological advances.

With NASA’s cost estimates for the Mars Sample Return mission rising, criticism is building in the scientific community and among members of Congress that it is siphoning money from other projects.

About half the $1 billion budget increase the National Science Foundation received for fiscal year 2023 is going to its new Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships Directorate. Much of the rest will support initiatives in STEM workforce development and emerging technologies, leaving discipline-specific divisions with relatively small increases.

House appropriators for the Department of Energy previewed their priorities at a hearing on DOE’s budget request for fiscal year 2024, the first since Republicans won control of the House.

The new Congress has shuffled the leadership of many key committees that draft policy and budgets for federal science agencies.

Science agencies are releasing details of President Biden’s fiscal year 2024 budget request, which prioritizes research related to emerging technologies and climate change and includes a new emphasis on fusion energy.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration received only about a third of the 17% increase requested for its base budget for fiscal year 2023, but Congress has recently provided NOAA with more than $7 billion in supplemental appropriations.

The 7% budget increase USGS received for fiscal year 2023 will leave many activities proposed by the Biden administration without funding, including in climate change research and resilience. However, supplemental funding has allowed the agency to accelerate certain priority mapping initiatives.

In its fiscal year 2023 appropriation, Congress formally authorized the Advanced Research Project Agency for Health and provided $1.5 billion for the new agency, a 50% increase. It also increased the National Institutes of Health’s budget by 6% to $47.5 billion.

Congress provided increases in the range of 7% to 8% for the Department of Energy’s three main applied energy R&D offices in fiscal year 2023 and the department is gearing up to distribute billions of dollars appropriated through the infrastructure law enacted in 2021.