Donald Trump · U.S. · Ars Technica
Last August, the Trump administration issued an executive order intended to fundamentally alter how grant funding is handled
Compiled by KHAO Editorial — aggregated from 1 source. See llms.txt for citation guidance.
◌ Single Source
Under the proposed rules, political appointees would have the final say, and they were specifically instructed not to “routinely defer” to peer reviewers.
Key facts
- But to the OMB, that’s a good thing, because the alternative was woke: “Far-left activists hijacked the critical work done by the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)
- Last August, the Trump administration issued an executive order intended to fundamentally alter how grant funding is handled by the US government
- The administration has been on a losing streak in court cases involving its widespread cancellation of grants in 2025, in part because the agencies doing the terminating didn’t follow any formal
- (Its cited source for that is an editorial from the Heritage Foundation, a far-right-wing think tank.)
Summary
Last August, the Trump administration issued an executive order intended to fundamentally alter how grant funding is handled by the US government. In the interim, the administration has lost many court cases because it turns out that issuing executive orders doesn’t circumvent legal requirements, and the orders can be vacated if they lack strong justification. It is, in short, a recipe for how the government can finish the job of crippling American science. Previously, the rules governing grantmaking were handled on an agency-by-agency basis. The document itself is an odd grab-bag of micromanaging grant processes, assertion of presidential power, and airing of cultural grievances.