The House Appropriations Committee approved its fiscal 2026 Commerce-Justice-Science spending bill Wednesday, including an amendment prohibiting the Trump administration from closing NOAA laboratories and ending university-based cooperatives that provide fundamental research on extreme weather and climate disasters.
The spending package, which passed 34-28 along party lines, also includes a manager’s amendment requiring NOAA to advance research on early prediction and warning systems for flood disasters in rural areas, provide support for NOAA’s Hurricane Hunter program and fund coral reef research institutes on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
The White House 2026 budget proposal would slash $2.2 billion from NOAA, including the dismantling of the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, or OAR, which oversees the 10 national laboratories and 16 cooperative institutes based at 80 U.S. research universities.
By contrast, the research labs amendment says the House Appropriations Committee “recognizes the critical mission of NOAA and the important contributions of its laboratories and cooperative institutes” and “directs NOAA to maintain these capabilities and to avoid closures, consolidations or eliminations given their essential role in advancing weather forecasting, climate science and oceanographic research.”
