Democratic Members Demand Withdrawal of OMB’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Condemn Attacks on Scientific Community
(Washington, DC) — Today, Science Democrats submitted a public comment to the docket of the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) proposed revisions to the Guidance for Federal Financial Assistance. OMB’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is far-reaching and would have severe consequences on our nation’s scientific enterprise. The Members demand that the proposed rule be withdrawn.
A summary of the many issues arising from OMB’s proposed rule is as follows:
- The proposed rule sets a double standard for political influence on grantmaking by declaring that agencies must prioritize alignment with Trump’s Presidential priorities, while arguing that Biden-era Executive Orders and grant decisions were illegal.
- The proposed rule allows agencies to terminate duly awarded grants if they are not in alignment with Presidential priorities — a clear waste of taxpayer dollars that have already been spent on projects that will now never see completion.
- The proposed rule insists that all diversity, equity, and inclusion-related activities are illegal, ignoring existing law that explicitly encourages efforts to broaden participation in STEM.
- The proposed rule would supplant existing bipartisan, heavily negotiated, reasonable research security laws, undermining the longstanding principle that fundamental research should remain as open as possible.
- The proposed rule formalizes the creation of blacklists, a strategy this Administration has already used to target politically disfavored institutions.
- The proposed rule limits the ability of agencies, the Government Accountability Office, and Offices of Inspectors General to initiate audits, hobbling independent oversight and shielding political appointees, who would have unprecedented power under this rule, from true accountability.
- The proposed rule would require political appointees to conduct reviews of all grants to ensure that selections are in alignment with Presidential priorities and advance the President’s policy interests. This provision undermines merit-based grant selection and would make it extremely difficult to fund high-risk, high-reward, curiosity-driven research.
“Though the proposed rule repeatedly touts itself as a boon for transparency, nowhere is this more obviously false than in the carte blanche it gives agencies to terminate duly awarded grants in section 200.340,” the Members wrote in their comment. “This is the opposite of transparency. Allowing any grant to be terminated for ‘no longer advancing’ agency priorities is absurdly fickle, compelling agencies to act on loose interpretations of poorly written guidance by the White House. This has already been the status quo since January 2025, and the American scientific enterprise is worse off for it.”
The Members continued, “This proposed rule is, in many ways, a mere formalization of the variety of uninformed, irresponsible, and illegal steps this Administration has taken to gut American science since President Trump’s first day in office. The proposed rule must be withdrawn. It is a deep shame that this Administration is so committed to its anti-DEI agenda that it would gladly burn down our scientific enterprise, so long as its perceived enemies burn along with it.”
The comment can be found here.
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