Video recording, resources and tips from the CASW Connector Chat
On April 30, 2026, CASW Connector hosted a Chat with Alessandra Zimmermann, AAAS project director for R&D policy, and Max Kozlov, award-winning science journalist at Nature.
The Chat was moderated by independent science journalist Virginia Gewin and facilitated by CASW program director Amber Dance.
Below you’ll find a recording of the Chat, takeaways and tips from the presenters.
This tip sheet is a living document; to share additional resources, contact the CASW Connector team at connector@casw.org. And sign up for our newsletter to receive updates about future Connector Chats and resources for science writing.
Tip Sheet: Understanding the Federal Appropriations Process
By Max Kozlov, Nature; with Alessandra Zimmerman, AAAS
Covering federal appropriations is a marathon of continuing resolutions, omnibus bills and 11th-hour negotiations. When the budget process breaks down, the ripple effects hit everything from grants that train the next generation of scientists to projects developing cures for cancer. Tracking appropriations helps the public understand how policy and funding shifts shape the future of research across the country.
Pro tips for covering the appropriations cycle
The president’s budget request is a messaging document, but the message matters. Congress holds the purse strings, and lawmakers often disregard the president’s budget request. But don’t ignore it. Even if a proposed 20% cut to a biomedical science program never materializes, the request signals exactly which agencies and research areas are being prioritized, or in their crosshairs.
Watch the apportionment process. The budget fight doesn’t end when the appropriations bill gets signed. Keep a close eye on the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which controls apportionment, the process where OMB sends appropriated funds to federal agencies. While traditionally a routine administrative function designed to keep agencies from spending their annual budgets too quickly, the Trump administration has used it to temporarily freeze funds for specific programs.
Look beyond the top-line numbers. A flat budget or a small percentage cut might not make front-page news on its own, but inflation means these “flat” budgets act as functional cuts. Dig into how purchasing power is actually changing for science agencies on the front lines.
Find the human impact. Funding delays or continuing resolutions can freeze agency functions. Talk to researchers trying to keep their labs afloat, postdocs whose hiring is delayed or university administrators trying to plan without a finalized federal budget.
Follow the targeted directives. Appropriators often include “Congressionally Directed Spending” or specific policy riders in the committee reports. These quietly steer money toward favored projects or restrict agencies from pursuing certain avenues of research.
Know a document’s legal weight. When you’re digging through appropriations documents, it is crucial to know what you are looking at. Bill text is the actual statutory text — the legally binding law that sets the hard dollar amounts and strict legal prohibitions (e.g., “None of the funds made available by this Act may be used for…”). Report language is found in the accompanying committee reports; it isn’t strictly legally binding, but it outlines congressional intent, earmarks and directives. Summary Statements outline what the majority is proud of in the bill — the part they want to brag about to their constituents. Finally, when the House and Senate inevitably smash their competing bills together at the last minute, look for the Joint Explanatory Statement. This document reconciles the differences between the two chambers and serves as the final, definitive guide on how Congress expects the administration to spend the money.
Essential trackers and dashboards
These are the indispensable tools for seeing where the numbers currently stand without having to parse the raw legislative text yourself. Keep in mind that some of these organizations are not neutral — they advocate for science and research funding.
- Congress.gov is the official website where bill language is posted. There is a helpful “appropriations status table” that tracks the process from start to finish.
- AIP Federal Science Budget Tracker: The American Institute of Physics maintains one of the most comprehensive trackers for the physical sciences, particularly the Department of Energy’s Office of Science and the National Science Foundation. The American Physical Society (an AIP member) also has a couple of really good dashboards for the physical sciences.
- AAAS R&D Appropriations Reports: The American Association for the Advancement of Science provides comprehensive, big-picture analyses of final R&D funding across the entire federal government. Also check out The Federal Budget Process 101, the FY 2027 R&D Appropriations Dashboard and previous slide presentations by Connector Chat speaker Alessandra Zimmermann.
- ScienceSpending.org: A great centralized dashboard for visualizing historic and current trends in federal science expenditure. It pulls from the National Institutes of Health’s RePORTER and NSF’s Award Search, if you want more specific deep diving.
- Congressional Research Service and Government Accountability Office: CRS and GAO reports are goldmines for nonpartisan, deep-dive funding histories on specific agencies. Both organizations perform their studies at the request of Congress (or in the case of GAO, occasionally when it thinks Congress might need to know even if they haven’t asked).
- Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget: A nonprofit, non-partisan organization that educates the public and the media about major U.S. fiscal issues.
- The Planetary Society has put together an accessible guide to NASA’s budget, including one for the president’s budget request each year (here’s FY27, for example).
- If you want to look at the impacts of budget cuts, there are a couple of places (caveat, though, that real time quantification of impacts is always going to be imprecise and have lots of assumptions in the calculations): The Impact Project and SCIMaP. Grant Witness also tries to quantify the cancelled grants across a range of agencies. Also check out CASW’s Connector Chat on “How To Cover Ongoing Chaos in Science Funding” from Fall 2025.
- If you’re interested in federal employment data, the Office of Personnel Management has its own visualization about the broad federal workforce, and Abigail Haddad (a freelance data scientist based in DC) creates tons of visualizations using federal datasets. The Federal Harms Tracker also tracks the more qualitative side of workforce impacts.
- OMB’s Public Apportionment Reading Room: OMB is legally required to post approved apportionment documents online. This website makes it much more user friendly.
- USAspending.gov: Tracking the budget is only half the battle; the other half is seeing where the money goes. This is the official open data source of federal spending, which is crucial for tracking how appropriated grant money is distributed to universities and labs.
- If you want to make international comparisons, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has a huge library of data — the most useful might be their Main Science and Technology Indicators but there are tons of other science-relevant datasets.
Extra reading