Researchers say the changes could affect basic parts of academic life and public science. Under the proposal, scientists could face new limits on:
- Collaborating with colleagues in certain other countries
- Attending conferences without prior approval
- Using grant funds to publish research in accessible journals
- Pursuing studies involving health equity, LGBTQIA+ populations, or gender-related care
The Office of Management and Budget has not responded to multiple requests for comment, according to the original reporting.
Why scientists say peer review is being sidelined
Federal science funding is already highly competitive and heavily reviewed. At agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, grant applications are evaluated by experts before any money is awarded.
Jeremy Berg, former editor-in-chief of the Science journals and former director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the NIH, described the process as layered and technical. Proposals are read by scientists on a study section, critiqued, discussed, scored, and then sent through advisory councils. Only the strongest applications tend to survive.
The latest available numbers show that, depending on the NIH institute, only about the top 8 to 20 percent of grants were funded each year. That is not exactly a system known for handing out cash because someone used the right buzzword in a hallway.
Berg said political intervention in individual grants has historically been rare, especially in basic science. Exceptions have existed, including politically sensitive areas such as embryonic stem cell research in the early 2000s. But as a general rule, he said, “the NIH director didn’t mess with individual grants at all.”
The political stakes behind research priorities
Science has never existed in a sealed room, untouched by politics. Congress can direct more money toward Alzheimer’s research, cancer, or other national priorities. Presidents can emphasize certain public health goals. But researchers warn that there is a difference between setting broad priorities and allowing political officials to veto individual projects.
Berg pointed to the early AIDS crisis as a grim example of what happens when politics overrides scientific urgency. He began research and clinical practice at the start of the crisis and recalled that President Ronald Reagan did not publicly address it for four years. “That position of politics over science probably killed a lot of people,” he said.
At the National Science Foundation, proposals are also judged through expert review. Donna Riley, dean of the school of engineering at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and a former NSF program officer from 2013 to 2015, said proposals are ranked by intellectual merit and broader impact. The goal, she said, was that “the science needs to be insulated so that the best ideas get funded, period.”
Jacquelyn Gill, a paleoecologist at the University of Maine in Orono, said that since World War II, NSF priorities have largely emerged from the scientific community. That has helped researchers trust that grants would not be jerked around every time control of Washington changed hands.
The word change that could make this harder to undo
Joanne Padrón Carney, chief government relations officer at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, DC, said the core concern is that OMB is moving from guidance to regulatory policy.
“What OMB is recommending is that they change this from just a simple guidance to a regulatory policy,” she said. That shift, she added, would create “a whole expansive authority over agencies and their procedures and their priorities when it comes to funding scientific research.”
The distinction matters because regulations are harder to reverse. Padrón Carney said the change would “essentially cement these changes into regulation.” A future administration that wanted to undo it would need to go through another formal rule-making process.
The proposal itself makes its political reasoning clear. It says that in 2021 federal agencies became increasingly focused on using award programs to serve a “woke” policy agenda. The new review system is framed as a way to ensure grants advance the president’s priorities, reinforcing President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14332 and echoing the “Gold Standard Science” language in Executive Order 14303.
Gill pushed back on that framing. “Rolling out the, ‘Oh, we’re going to have a gold standard of peer review, all science is going to have to meet this standard, which is not defined,’ ignores the fact that that standard already exists and is clearly well defined,” she said.
DEI, gender, and entire research fields under threat
The proposal bars funding for diversity initiatives and requires agencies to accept “the biological reality of sex or the sex binary in humans.” It also says federal grants must not promote the so-called “transition” of a child under 19 from one sex to another.
Researchers say that language could wipe out wide categories of public health work, including studies on racial health disparities, LGBTQIA+ health, and gender-related medical care. Some grants in those areas, including clinical trials, have already been canceled under the second Trump administration.
Elizabeth Ginexi, who worked as an NIH scientific program officer for 22 years, said grant cancellations at NIH were historically reserved for serious problems such as fraud or scientific misconduct. “It was never ‘I don’t really like the topic of your grant,’” she said.
She also rejected the proposal’s claims about federal agencies funding extreme ideological projects. “Saying that the NIH or NSF or whoever has been funding neo-Marxist things, that’s not evidence,” Ginexi said. “That’s not a reason. That’s nonsense.”
Conferences, publishing, and collaboration could all be hit
The proposed rule would also affect the less glamorous machinery that keeps science moving. Researchers often present findings at conferences, where they meet collaborators, recruit students, and respond to emerging problems. The new rules would require preapproval for conference attendance.
Gill said the provision may sound like ordinary fiscal oversight, but conferences often arise quickly around urgent scientific needs. A system requiring advance political approval could leave researchers unable to respond.
Publishing is another problem. Scientific journals can charge thousands of dollars to publish a paper, especially if it is open access and available to the public. Biden administration guidance required federally funded research to be made open access. But the proposed OMB rule would prevent grants from paying publication costs.
“There’s no other place for that money to come from for most of us,” Gill said. Researchers might publish fewer papers, damaging careers and slowing public access to findings, or turn to cheaper journals that are not open access.
Foreign collaboration is also at risk. Delawalla said the rule bars federal money from supporting work with foreign adversaries, but uses vague language about “parties.” It is unclear whether that means individual scientists, universities, companies, or whole countries. Opponents say that uncertainty could chill even routine work.
Delawalla pointed to US and Chinese satellite safety coordination as one example. She said offices in both countries communicate constantly to prevent collisions in space. Under the rule, she warned, “That line of communication is immediately severed upon passage of this rule.”
The uncertainty reaches students, labs, and the workforce
The proposal’s vague language is one of its most alarming parts, Padrón Carney said. She said future appointees would be left to define terms such as “gold standard science,” “anti-American,” “domestic first,” and what counts as an acceptable foreign collaborator.
That matters in a research system that depends heavily on international talent. The latest available data show international scientists make up about 19 percent of all STEM workers in the United States and 43 percent of PhD-level scientists.
Delawalla said Stand Up for Science expected a move like this before the midterm elections. After the Gold Standard Science executive order came out in May 2025, the group launched a campaign warning that the government was trying to take over scientific research.
“It’s really funny ’cause people thought we were so nuts,” she said. “People were like, ‘This is extreme, you guys are extremists, you’re being loud about things, this isn’t going to happen in America.’”
The concern is no longer theoretical. Grants and funding programs have been canceled or delayed since the early days of the second Trump administration, and researchers say the effects are already visible.
Canceled grants are already reshaping science careers
Ginexi said one canceled NIH request for grant applications could have supported work toward an HIV/AIDS cure. The research would have used technology similar to mRNA technology, she said, which the administration opposed. “We could have literally had a vaccine ready so that no one would get AIDS anymore,” she said.
A letter published in JAMA on June 8 found that the number of scientists supported by federal grants dropped in 2025 for the first time since 2016. Berg said Black and Hispanic scientists saw some of the steepest declines. He noted that some researchers from minority communities work on health disparities and related topics, areas that were among the first affected.
The pressure also hits lab staff and students. Gill said federal grants often pay salaries for graduate students, technicians, and other workers, not just equipment or supplies. If a grant can vanish at any time, so can a job.
Graduate programs are already responding. Berg said some institutions, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, appear to be reducing incoming graduate students because they do not know how they will pay for them. He said MIT has about 80 percent as many graduate students as the previous year.
Ginexi put the pipeline risk plainly: “We’re going to lose the future of our science pipeline. We will basically no longer be doing much science in the U.S. at all.”
What opponents say the public can still do
The OMB proposal remains open for public comment until July 13. As of June 29, it had received more than 38,000 comments.
Delawalla said people do not need to be scientists to submit comments, and comments can be filed anonymously. What matters, she said, is making them substantive: explain how a grant, program, lab, business, health service, or community would be affected.
“Writing comments in this moment really, really matters,” Delawalla said. If someone describes how a canceled grant would harm them, she said, that can create “a litigation hook” if the rule is finalized and the grant is later canceled.
Ginexi argued that the proposal is legally vulnerable because rule changes are supposed to have legitimate reasons. She said the document leans on claims from right-wing organizations such as the Heritage Foundation rather than solid evidence.
Congress could also act before the rule takes effect. Ginexi said lawmakers could pass a joint resolution of disapproval, which would stop the rule. Scientists and advocacy groups are urging people to contact members of Congress, including Republicans, by emphasizing not only scientific damage but economic fallout.
Why this reaches beyond laboratories
The rule is framed as a fight over research funding, but its reach is much wider. Federal grants support services people encounter in ordinary life, including mental health care access, low-income housing, veterans’ programs, education initiatives, public health projects, and early childhood programs.
Ginexi said many Americans do not see how much of what reaches their communities comes through federal programs. Local, county, and state funds matter, but federal grant money supports a large share of services and infrastructure.
If those grants become subject to political review and can be withdrawn at any point, the consequences would not stay inside universities. “Everyone will be affected, not just scientists, every community in the country,” Ginexi said.
That is the quiet power of a dense federal proposal: it can look like paperwork while rearranging the lives of people who never had any reason to read 412 pages of it. The comment period is still open, and opponents are treating the deadline as one of the few remaining pressure points before a major shift in federal funding becomes much harder to reverse.
