New White House rule would put political appointees in charge of federal grants

Political appointees will review and sign off on all federal grants under a new rule the Trump administration said will ensure that no tax dollars support "anti-American" values or agendas deemed to be far left-wing. The regulation is now being finalized after the public comment period closed July 13.

The rule would also alter federal procurement requirements by eliminating sustainability, energy-efficiency and recycled content provisions from government purchasing. The changes would go into effect Oct. 1.

The sweeping rule proposed by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on May 29 would significantly change how the federal government awards more than $1 trillion in grants, cooperative agreements and other financial assistance. The grants go to states, tribes, nonprofits, research organizations and thousands of other recipients.

Today, grant proposals are reviewed by a panel of peers, scientists and professionals who score grant applications on which funding decisions are made. Under the new rule, such peer panels would only have an advisory role.

The plan proposed by the OMB, which serves the executive branch under Director Russ Vought, received nearly half a million comments from individuals, public interest groups and legal scholars. Of the 53,000-plus comments published so far, 94% opposed the proposed change, according to independent Claude AI analysis by data scientist Abigail Haddad.

The OMB said the changes are needed to improve transparency and accountability after the Biden administration awarded what Vought's office said were billions of dollars in unlawful grants that promoted "far-left" and "neo-Marxist" projects. The proposed rule specifically highlights grants focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) along with gender issues, and also revises how grants can be terminated "when the award no longer advances federal agency priorities."

The termination clause follows the Trump administration's decisions in 2025 to freeze and cancel billions in grants for climate-related projects and disaster mitigation along with other programs, over which multiple lawsuits are still pending.

Twenty states in June also sued the administration over federal agencies implementing President Donald Trump's executive order to eliminate DEI initiatives by federal contractors. The presidential order is cited in the OMB rule.

Pushback from scientists, lawmakers

Science, environmental and public interest groups opposed to the rule say it will undermine research and development in the US.

"Grants leading to breakthroughs in many areas critical to the US energy economy such as LED lighting, advanced batteries and geothermal energy were given to a wide variety of people and institutions selected purely on the technical merits of their proposals," wrote Henry Kelly, a former official with the US Department of Energy, in his comment to the OMB. "Some of the most important innovations came from groups unfamiliar to our unbiased reviewers. A political review by people unfamiliar with the technical merits would certainly have blocked some of the most creative of these proposals."

Others expressed concern over the rule allowing federal contracts to be canceled at any time by a political appointee.

"The proposed rule restricts and marginalizes the scientific review of individual research projects, giving political appointees the ability to terminate research projects at any stage of a project's lifecycle for reasons well beyond scientific merit and potential societal benefit," Carlos Martín, vice president of research and policy engagement for the research group Resources for the Future, wrote in his comment to OMB.

In a June 26 letter to Vought, 127 lawmakers also weighed in to say the proposed rule would subject "congressionally-mandated spending to excessive political control."

The OMB said the changes will ensure that "recipients are held accountable when they fail to meet relevant standards."