I'm summarizing this as briefly as I can. There are many articles out there you can find if you need more info.
The US National Science Board (NSB), the managing board for the National Science Foundation (NSF), has decided to provide funding of $1.6 billion to the US Extremely Large Telescope Program. This includes the TMT and the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) in Chile. Both projects now have expected costs of around $3 billion. Although both have funding from other sources, the amount of money being provided by the NSB will likely mean only one telescope will be funded by them and the NSF needs to choose which one. Given Europe is way ahead in building its own extremely large telescope in Chile, if the NSF chooses the GMT it'll be well behind Europe and there will be no 30-meter class telescope in the northern hemisphere. If the TMT is chosen instead, then it runs into the controversies I'm sure everyone here is aware of.
https://www.nsf.gov/nsb/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=309171&org=NSB&from=news
https://www.science.org/content/article/...telescopes
https://ww2.aip.org/fyi/nsf-likely-to-dr...tion-funds
The US National Science Board (NSB), the managing board for the National Science Foundation (NSF), has decided to provide funding of $1.6 billion to the US Extremely Large Telescope Program. This includes the TMT and the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) in Chile. Both projects now have expected costs of around $3 billion. Although both have funding from other sources, the amount of money being provided by the NSB will likely mean only one telescope will be funded by them and the NSF needs to choose which one. Given Europe is way ahead in building its own extremely large telescope in Chile, if the NSF chooses the GMT it'll be well behind Europe and there will be no 30-meter class telescope in the northern hemisphere. If the TMT is chosen instead, then it runs into the controversies I'm sure everyone here is aware of.
https://www.nsf.gov/nsb/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=309171&org=NSB&from=news
https://www.science.org/content/article/...telescopes
https://ww2.aip.org/fyi/nsf-likely-to-dr...tion-funds