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U.S.|California’s $23 Billion Plan to Restore Federal Cuts to Scientific Research
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/13/us/california-scientific-research-bond.html
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Democrats are calling for the creation of a state equivalent of the National Institutes of Health, but first state lawmakers and then voters would need to approve it.
Sept. 13, 2025, 12:41 a.m. ET
Democratic lawmakers in California want the state to restore funding for scientific research that has been slashed by the Trump administration, creating an ambitious plan to use tens of billions of dollars in voter-approved bonds to fill the void.
Supporters of the proposal said it would effectively create a state version of the National Institutes of Health or the National Science Foundation, two of the nation’s largest institutional funders of scientific and public health research. The move follows California, Washington and Oregon’s announcement that they would form a health alliance to review scientific data and make vaccine recommendations for their residents, in an attempt to bypass vaccine skeptics in the Trump administration.
The plan to back scientific research calls for lawmakers to pass, and for voters to approve in a 2026 ballot measure, a proposed $23 billion in bonds, financing that will allow the state to make grants and loans to universities, research companies and health care organizations.
It would be the largest state effort of its kind, and is considerably more aggressive than one floated in Massachusetts in July, when Gov. Maura Healey made a $400 million proposal for research there.
In California, the federal cuts have been deep, and are expected to worsen. At one site alone — the University of California, Los Angeles — the Trump administration has already sought to freeze roughly $584 million in federal research grants, state lawmakers said.
The legislation behind the restoration effort — written by State Senator Scott Wiener of San Francisco and Assemblyman José Luis Solache Jr. of Lynwood, in Southern California — was made public late Friday, when the authors formally introduced it. The bill will not come up for consideration until January, after the state’s legislative recess, and will require the approval of a supermajority of the Legislature to be placed on the 2026 ballot.
