Both Nature and Science reported on April 3, 2026 that NSF plans to eliminate its Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) directorate based on the President's Fiscal Year 2027 budget request. Although the President's budget request typically represents only the beginning of federal spending negotiations, actions during the past year have short-circuited the usual appropriation process and resulted in widespread cuts to agencies and programs throughout the federal government.

According to the report in Nature, "The White House seeks to slash the NSF budget by nearly 55%, to $4 billion. The proposal also cuts all funding for the NSF division that funds research on the social sciences and economics. At an internal all-hands meeting on Friday, NSF leaders announced that they would dissolve the agency’s Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences directorate based on the budget request, according to two NSF staff members who shared information anonymously in order to speak freely. The NSF’s budget request to Congress states that the agency will shut down the SBE but maintain SBE “grants that align with Administration priorities, such as in behavioral and cognitive science, and all impacted employees will be transferred to other parts of the agency”." (Complete article requires subscription)

Regarding NSF, Science reports, "Each of NSF’s eight research directorates would get a cut, as would the agency’s Office of Polar Programs. And the request calls for the elimination of NSF’s Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE), which last year awarded $154 million in grants in fields including archaeology, bioanthropology, cultural anthropology, cognitive science, linguistics, and social psychology. Ongoing SBE grants that “align with Administration priorities, such as in behavioral and cognitive science,” would be moved to other parts of the agency. It proposes to separately fund one SBE project, the $44 million National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, which tracks data on U.S. competitiveness in science, technology, engineering, and math fields." [The report in Science covers multiple agencies and seems to be accessible without a subscription.]

DCSS will post further updates as they become available.