White House move to step up political role in US research sparks alarm

Proposed sweeping changes to the processes for awarding any kind of federal grant would completely overhaul the independent grant review process and have prompted intense criticism from scientists and the research community.

“These rules declare war on honest science,” Gregg Gonsalves, an epidemiologist at Yale University’s School of Public Health, says in a statement from Defend Public Health.

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) published a proposed rule on May 29 covering every federal agency and department that distributes funds, from science agencies like NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) to the Department of Homeland Security, the Commerce Department, and the Peace Corps.

The rule would require political appointees at the agencies to review and approve all funding before it is awarded—downgrading to an advisory role the peer review process that is currently used. Final grant reviewers would be discouraged from considering the outcome of peer review; instead, they would be expected to use “independent judgment.”

It also gives agencies the ability to terminate any grant, at any time, for any reason; restricts US scientists with federal funding from collaborating with China or with researchers from any country that collaborates with China; and bans the use of federal funds to “fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate” anything it deems as engaging in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) or supporting a view that there are genders beyond the binary sexes.

“It is catastrophic,” says Colette Delawalla, founder and CEO of the nonprofit advocacy group Stand Up for Science. “And I do not use that word lightly.”

Rule would codify executive orders into law

The rule contains one small relief for researchers, says Carrie Wolinetz, senior principal at Lewis-Burke Associates, who served as chief of staff for former NIH director Francis Collins as well as at the Office of Science and Technology Policy across the Barack Obama, first Donald J. Trump, and Joe Biden administrations: It does not address indirect cost rates, which the OMB had previously attempted to slash.

“And then, thus ended the good news,” Wolinetz says.

With the proposed rule, the OMB is codifying many directives that have already come through executive orders and memos, Wolinetz says. The ban on DEI mirrors an order from day one of Trump’s second term that calls such programs “illegal and immoral,” for example, and the political review of grants formalizes an order from August 2025 to “strengthen oversight” of federal grantmaking.

The rule also frequently refers to an administration ethos outlined in a May 2025 executive order, “Gold Standard Science.” 

If promulgated, the rule would be more difficult to challenge legally than previous approaches, Wolinetz says. To change, it must be overturned in court, blocked by Congress, or undone through another rulemaking process, which can take years.

“Some of these very large and major changes that are running counter to the way we have operated as a scientific community for a long time—it’s one thing to try to do that through agency policy or something that could be easily undone if it turns out to be too disruptive,” Wolinetz says. “Doing it through a rule could have a very long-term impact on science, and I am worried about that.”

Congress appears to be taking on political interference in grantmaking: in May, senators including geologist John Hickenlooper (D-CO) introduced the Scientific Integrity Act to match a bill introduced in the House last year.

The bill would require federal agencies that fund science to adopt and enforce scientific integrity policies and would prohibit political influence on research findings and their publication and dissemination.

“At a moment when independent science is under immense and increasing pressure, it is lawmakers’ duty to strengthen available guardrails,” Jules Barbati-Dajches, an analyst for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, says in a statement.

A tight timeline before fiscal 2027

The rule leans heavily on “anti-woke” language, alleging that under the Biden administration, federal agencies used grants “to serve a ‘woke’ policy agenda that deliberately favored certain identity groups over others.”

That suggests the political oversight will prevent grants from going to research that doesn’t align with the administration’s viewpoints, Delawalla says, including topics like women’s and LGBTQ health, clean energy, and climate change.

Grant application reviewers would also be allowed to consider an applicant’s activities outside science, including advocacy and organizational affiliations. That provision is a “really severe attack on First Amendment activities,” Delawalla says.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), ranking member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, calls the proposal a “dystopian” escalation of the administration’s actions in the past year and a half.

“With this proposed regulation, American leadership in science is dealt a fatal blow,” Lofgren says in a statement.

The OMB is collecting comments on the rule through July 13, a 45-day period that the agency says is intended to provide enough time to issue a final rule by Oct. 1, when fiscal 2027 begins. That’s an unusually short timeline, Wolinetz says, given that the OMB is required by law to analyze and respond to each comment. The rule has more than 1,500 comments as of June 2.