New Rule Would Politicize Grant Decisions, Scientists Say

A sweeping proposed rule that would transfer federal grantmaking decisions from scientific experts to senior political appointees is “dystopian,” “disastrous,” and a “flagrant assault on our democracy,” scientists and health advocates said.

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) document, issued May 28, seeks to give the Trump administration authority over funding throughout the government, they said.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) said that if finalized, the White House rule “would replace scientific merit with McCarthy-era politics,” and called on Congress to block the rule.

IDSA president Ronald Nahass, MD, said in a statement that the rule would compromise “medical research, public health, and healthcare access for vulnerable populations.”

“Make no mistake, the impacts of this proposed rule would be dire; it would fundamentally alter the U.S. approach to science, drive away multitudes of researchers, and eliminate the promise of lifesaving cures for decades to come,” he added. “Placing grant decisions in the hands of politicians and requiring that scientists adhere to the Administration’s ideology is a serious limitation on civil liberties and would diminish the development of high-quality research.”

Elizabeth Ginexi, PhD, a former NIH scientific program official, told MedPage Today that if finalized, the rule would take “the scientific civil servant out of the picture and put the control at OMB for deciding what gets spent or not spent.”

“If an institute has a grant it wants to fund … they’d have to send it to HHS, and presumably even further to the OMB for clearance,” she said. She wrote in a June 1 Substack that the rule “is the universal legal framework governing every federal grant to every recipient across every agency in the federal government. When OMB rewrites it, they are rewriting the rules for all of it.”

“They don’t want civil servants making those decisions, and they certainly don’t want that much money going to people they don’t care for,” Ginexi told MedPage Today. “This is pretty dystopian stuff.”

In her Substack from May 28, the day the proposed rule was published, she listed 18 “key changes” it would make to the grant funding process. A sub-headline said OMB director Russell Vought “is going to destroy American Science.”

For starters, much of the proposal’s wording targets any grant “designed to advance unlawful identity-based ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ (DEI) policies” or “award programs to serve a ‘woke’ policy agenda that deliberately favored certain identity groups over others.”

Ginexi, who left her job last year because she felt pressure “to implement the political whims of the administration,” said insiders have told her much of this proposed rule is already embedded in NIH practice. Anonymous officials are changing what study protocols are used “even after the peer review process found the study to be meritorious,” she said.

The proposed rule goes much farther than just eliminating DEI from federally funded scientific projects. Other provisions would give the administration the authority to terminate awards even in the middle of the grant period. It would also forbid collaboration with researchers in certain countries.

Using grant funds for a subscription to a business, professional, academic, or technical periodical would be disallowed. And it would prohibit the use of funds for professional journal article processing charges, which several scientists said could limit their ability to publish.

It also would require grantees to get federal approval before grant funds could be used to attend conferences, and only if approval is specified in the grant. A grant also could be rejected if the applicant is a member of certain organizations deemed to “undermine public safety or national security.”

Ginexi said she was able to compare language in last year’s rule and found a consistent change. “Every single instance where there was the word ‘guidance,’ now that’s been replaced with the word ‘regulation,'” she said. In effect, the rule is a legal mechanism “to turn a guidance document for good grant making to what is now a fiat.”

Other scientists and public health advocates are fighting back with a campaign to encourage opposing comments on regulations.gov by the July 13 deadline. Colette Delawalla, CEO of Stand Up For Science — which is holding an emergency meeting to rally opposition — said that could convince Congress to block finalization.

“This just disastrous rule is a flagrant assault on our democracy,” Delawalla told MedPage Today. “Scientists for so long have been happily living under our little rock, staying in their labs, and not concerned about politics. Those days are now over.”

Physicians and other health providers will be affected as well, she said. “Physicians are arguably the frontline witnesses to our nation’s health disparities. And this is going to make those so much worse,” Delawalla said.

Jeremy Berg, PhD, a former director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, told MedPage Today the goal of this policy is “to undermine university business plans.”

This administration “has big objections to universities as being ‘woke’ and supporting things they find politically objectionable … particularly universities that have academic medical centers and are very dependent on NIH funding for a lot of what they do,” Berg said. “If you can undermine that whole process, you can bring the universities to their knees. … And it also becomes harder for scientists to publish.”

“Scientific grants will no longer be funded based on objective peer review by scientists, but instead, subjectively by ideologues without the requisite expertise,” Steffanie Strathdee, PhD, of the University of California San Diego and co-director of its Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics, told MedPage Today.

“Such deadly public policies will ensure that America is no longer the world leader in science,” she said. “Fewer meritorious grants will be funded, fewer young scientists will want to conduct research, and more scientists will leave the U.S. for other countries.”

Elizabeth Skerry, regulatory policy associate for Public Citizen, said the rule is “part of the Trump administration’s attack on science, research, and education. It’s also in keeping similarly with the administration’s attacks on federal agencies.”