The White House in late May proposed a rule that would cement its control over essentially all federal grant making, including research funding and Education Department grants.
Among other changes, the proposal from the Office of Management and Budget says political appointees, not peer reviewers, would be the primary deciders of who gets grants, and says officials could yank funding even after it’s awarded and research or another project has begun. Opponents in and outside higher ed say the politicization could undercut research and all the societal benefits that flow from it, and the possibility of more midgrant cancellations could inject further instability into a sector the Trump administration has already destabilized.
Through social media, video calls, Substacks and petitions, scientists, universities and groups representing them have called for a flood of public comments. They’ve shared resources listing objectionable provisions they’ve identified in the more than 400-page proposal. They’ve provided online guides to the public on how to write comments pushing back on specific changes that would affect them.
The input might lead the White House to alter its proposal. But, even if that doesn’t happen, opponents say the comments could still slow implementation of the changes because the OMB must reply to them. And a monsoon could persuade Congress, which has repeatedly rejected Trump’s previous proposals to gut research funding, to use its power to stop these changes.
Comments also put into the public record objections that, if the government doesn’t address them, could be raised again in lawsuits to stop the changes.
The deluge opponents have called for has arrived: The proposal has already received roughly 90,000 public comments, and the comment period isn’t over until July 13.
“We have launched a frankly enormous campaign educating the public and scientists on what is included in this rule,” said Colette Delawalla, chief executive officer of Stand Up for Science, a group she founded last year amid the Trump administration’s disruption of science.
Delawalla said her organization, which has been making media appearances and posting short social media videos and otherwise speaking out against what she calls this “overtly fascist” proposal, is trying to “rile people up.”
“I think a big part of this is the yelling,” she told Inside Higher Ed.
Another group, Defend Public Health, is also coordinating opposition. “Our first order of business is to get as many comments as possible,” Melinda Rostal, a veterinary epidemiologist who’s leading the organization’s response, told Inside Higher Ed.
Among other approaches, Defend Public Health has been hosting sessions to answer the public’s questions about how to comment, Rostal said. The rule would affect federal grants far beyond science, health and education—including transportation funding, she said.
“We need to get the word out to the towns, cities and the general public … This is a threat to them as well as to science,” Rostal said.
LinkedIn has been a major forum for discussion of and pushback against the proposal. “Continue to flood the zone!!” Logan Spector, a University of Minnesota–Twin Cities pediatrics professor, wrote on the site last month.
Prestigious scientific journals are also speaking out in editorials.
“The scientific community needs to flood OMB with responses during the public comment period,” Holden Thorp wrote in Science, of which he’s editor in chief. He added that “universities and associations must speak out as a united front to mobilize Congress and be ready to file lawsuits once the regulations are finalized.”
“The red light is now flashing,” he wrote. “All hands, report to stations.”
The New England Journal of Medicine compared the proposal to Lysenkoism, when the U.S.S.R.’s political rejection of genetics set the country back in agriculture and other areas.
“Lysenkoism demonstrated that allowing politics to control the scientific process can halt or even reverse a nation’s progress,” editors of the journal wrote. “Erratic funding would fundamentally undermine innovation and dramatically impair America’s ability to address today’s health challenges. The OMB proposal is currently open for public comment, and we urge our readers to express their concerns.”
The ‘National Interest’
The OMB has argued to Inside Higher Ed and in the proposal that the changes would “bring much-needed accountability to the grantmaking process and ensure taxpayer dollars are spent wisely.”
In an email last month, an OMB spokesperson said the Biden administration politicized grants already “to promote a far-left DEI agenda with projects like drag shows in Ecuador and transgender experiments on mice.”
“That ends now,” the spokesperson said.
OMB, in the proposed rule’s executive summary, complained that the federal grants had funded “various anti-American ideologies in American education,” “non-replicable and highly misleading studies,” “labs engaged in gain-of-function research,” and “neo-Marxist perspectives about enduring class struggle.”
The Trump administration terminated thousands of grants last year, arguing that they didn’t align with the president’s priorities. While courts reversed many of those terminations, the planned new regulations would help insulate from lawsuits the administration’s future attempts to control grant funding. The changes would not only alter what’s historically been called OMB’s “uniform guidance” for grant making, but also elevate that guidance into a binding rule across the federal government.
The agency’s proposal would assert the Trump administration’s political control throughout the grant-making process, from new requirements for how federal agencies must write award solicitations all the way through new restrictions on how scientists can share results from any research funding they receive.
“It injects politics and ideology because of each of those steps,” said Amanda Fuchs Miller, president of Seventh Street Strategies and former deputy assistant secretary for higher ed programs during the Biden administration.
The proposed rule contains multiple undefined terms and phrases, such as “national interest,” that administration officials could interpret to their liking. Delawalla, the Stand Up for Science CEO, said, “It allows for just carte blanche freedom of the executive branch to do what they want.”
A Litany of Issues
Those pushing back against the proposed rule have called for opposition to all the following provisions.
Under the rule, notices of funding opportunities—the federal calls for grant applications—would newly have to “align with administration policies and priorities.” Federal agencies could decide not to make grant competitions public if they determine privacy “is in the national interest.”
After researchers submit applications as part of public or private competitions, the administration’s “senior appointees” would have to conduct “pre-issuance reviews” of “all discretionary awards,” ensuring they follow “applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest.”
These appointees must “use their independent judgment” and “not ministerially ratify or routinely defer to the recommendations of others.” Those “others” include federal agencies’ internal scientists and external university researchers who serve as peer reviewers for grant applications. Peer-review recommendations must be “advisory” and not be “treated as de facto binding.”
“Why would you do the peer review if you’re not going to use it to give out the awards?” Miller said.
Funding wouldn’t be guaranteed even to those who win awards. The proposal would give the Trump administration sweeping powers to cancel funding for projects researchers have already started. Federal agencies could terminate grants that they determine aren’t in their “interest,” including those that don’t “effectuate program goals, Federal agency priorities, or the national interest as they exist at the time of the termination.”
Federal agencies must also, “to the maximum extent permitted by law” ensure grants don’t promote affirmative action, “the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic” or the “so-called ‘transition’ of a child under 19 years of age from one sex to another.” Grants also couldn’t fund “public messaging that promotes or opposes a particular social, political, or public policy position,” or any attempts to influence a state’s executive branch, “on matters unrelated to the [grants’] objectives or performance requirements.”
“Researchers will be afraid to talk to their state policymakers about their research,” Miller said.
Grants also couldn’t fund studies on or otherwise “support the use of disparate-impact liability.” The proposal defines that as “a theory under which a facially neutral policy” creates “an automatic or near-insurmountable presumption” that unlawful discrimination exists due to “any differences or disparities in outcomes” among “different races, sexes, or similar groups.” The Trump administration has been trying to stop disparate-impact analysis at the Education Department and elsewhere.
Federal agencies are required to conduct risk assessments of grant applicants. The proposal would add to these assessments requirements to check whether the applicants have done things “inconsistent with Federal civil rights laws, including the equal protection principles of the U.S. Constitution and prohibitions against unlawful discrimination,” or are affiliated with “organizations engaged in activities that violate Federal law, undermine public safety or national security, or advocate for the overthrow of the United States Government.”
The proposal would also restrict international scientific collaboration. It says grant recipients and subrecipients can’t, without preapproval, spend federal dollars “to support a bilateral or multilateral” activity “with a covered foreign country or covered foreign entity.” Those forbidden countries include China, Russia and others, and the president can pick other countries and entities to add.
Beyond just the verboten countries, the proposal says, “Federal agencies must apply a domestic-first framework, under which international elements may be included only if the Federal agency determines that such elements are justified, consistent with program objectives, and in the national interest of the United States.”
When it comes time for researchers to publish scientific articles, the rule would still impact them and members of the public who wish to read their research. Unless “specifically required by Federal statute or approved in advance by the Federal agency on a case-by-case basis,” grants won’t fund “publication costs (including page charges, article processing charges, or similar fees such as open access fees.” Open-access fees are paid to journal publishers in exchange for those publishers making the articles publicly free to read online.
Researchers also couldn’t use grant money to pay for “subscriptions to business, professional, academic, and technical periodicals,” and conference attendance costs would be covered only if participation “is expressly approved by the Federal agency and included in the terms and conditions of the Federal award.”
