OMB Rule Would Let Any Agency Kill Any Federal Grant at Any Time

The Office of Management and Budget is moving an August executive order into formal rulemaking after courts repeatedly struck down the administration’s attempts to remake federal science funding by fiat. The proposed rules would demote peer review, hand final funding decisions to political appointees who are explicitly told not to defer to subject-matter experts, and let any agency cancel any active grant at any time on vague ‘national interest’ grounds.

Beyond the kill switch, the draft bans grants touching a list of culture-war topics, restricts international collaborations, and blocks routine research expenses like journal publication fees and conference travel. It also consolidates grantmaking under a single OMB framework, replacing the agency-specific procedures that NIH, DOE, and others have built up over decades.

By routing the changes through notice-and-comment rulemaking rather than executive order, the administration is trying to insulate them from the legal challenges that have vacated earlier moves. If finalized, the rules would give political appointees a permanent veto over the US research enterprise and make every funded project revocable on demand.