Below is the article

The Office of Management and Budget is withholding money for NASA’s science missions, a move that bucks Congress and goes against a funding bill signed into law.

Officials have directed the space agency to pause work on a host of science missions the White House originally pushed to cancel in its 2026 budget request, according to a letter sent to the agency’s centers from NASA headquarters and obtained by POLITICO.

The letter didn’t explain why the administration is holding funds, which are limited to science missions, but Trump has sought to slash federal funds for scientific research and climate-change related activities. The missions listed in the letter include key programs that study the Earth, climate-related efforts and programs that study other planets in the universe.

OMB and NASA did not respond to a request for comment.

What’s next: The “temporary hold” is expected to last for 10 days “but may be extended,” according to the letter, which states additional instructions will be provided once it receives formal guidance from OMB on the funding.

Key context: The letter follows an effort from the White House to drastically cut NASA’s science missions in its 2026 budget. The budget proposal would have sliced the agency’s science portfolio by almost half and canceled several programs already in the works.

But Senate and House appropriators in the recent minibus bill restored nearly all of the agency’s science funding, defying the administration.

Lawmaker pushback: OMB Director Russ Vought is breaking the law by ignoring the NASA funding bill passed by Congress, said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, ranking member of the Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations subcommittee.

“The time for Vought’s hostage-taking is over — he needs to obey the law and release the funds for NASA’s critical science missions,” Van Hollen said in a statement.

If this turns out to be true and the Admin did not have a pretty good reason for why the hold was placed this is going to be a huge issue for President Trump with the Republican base. The NASA funding passed and passed with overwhelming Republican support and if he has tried to move again to block or limit funding then shit is going to hit the fan.

NASA enjoys bipartisan support so to target it is a stupid stupid move by OMB Director Vought and will lead to him getting pulled front and center over what he has tried to get OMB to do this first year plus. Vaught has managed to be held accountable for the moves he made before, during, and after the shut down last year and there are a lot of things he has done that well.... they need to be looked into a hell of a lot more.

Its clear Vought is trying all the tricks in the book to cut government spending from the staffing sizes to pocket recissions (the later of which I have mixed emotions at best about). This early in the FY 26 funding though there is no need what so ever for halting funding and this highlights my next comment in that we have heard that at the Department of Energy they are only getting their funds 30 days at a time which is not normal and severely affects the ability for a multitude of programs, experiments, and labs to operate efficiently both scientifically but also monetarily.