New Executive Order Corrupts Federal Grants With Political Appointee Oversight and Interference

New Executive Order hands control of all federally funded research to political appointees with no scientific or subject matter expertise.

WASHINGTON, DC, UNITED STATES, August 8, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- On August 7th, President Trump signed a new Executive Order (EO), "Improving Federal Oversight on Federal Grantmaking," that hands control of all federally funded research to political appointees, with seemingly no scientific or subject matter expertise. The Order bans funding research that promotes "anti-American values"—including gender and racial considerations—and requires all grants to be aligned with "the President's policy priorities." This EO is another illustration of executive overreach. Experts are concerned politicization and censorship of science will have negative consequences for academic freedom, scientific integrity, and democracy.

The role of scientific peer review is minimized, with regulatory power vested in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and all funding related decision-making resting with political appointees, who are instructed to cancel projects at any time if deemed to deviate from "agency priorities." The Order prioritizes funding that will achieve a vague and undefined "Gold Standard Science;" dismisses research that doesn't yield an immediate breakthrough as "wasteful" or "fraudulent;" and ignores the slow, iterative nature of scientific innovation and discovery.

"Much of this Executive Order is predicated on misinformation" states Dr. Jeremy Berg, former Director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at NIH and member of Stand Up For Science's advisory board. As an example, Dr. Berg points out that "even though it has been exactly seven months since OMB forced NIH to release the notice capping indirect costs, OMB has still not bothered to learn what they are or how they are reimbursed. If we approached science in this way, we would still be studying the four elements, Earth, Air, Fire, and Water."

The EO states preference for grant-recipients at institutions with the lowest indirect costs rates versus reimbursement, thus failing to consider that the tools of scientific research—qualified staff, sophisticated equipment, specialized facilities, and premium materials—are costly and required to support innovation. The indirect cost directive of this Order will have a greater impact on institutions such as children's hospitals and rural institutions, with higher indirect cost rates (despite significantly lower actual reimbursement rate from the government) because these institutions are unable to pool resources with neighbors, setting back advances in pediatric research and privileging institutions in urban areas.

"Unpatriotic in the extreme. China is surely cheering this latest Trump/Vought stupidity" says Dr. Victor Ambros, Nobel laureate and member of the Stand Up For Science advisory board, offering a scathing assessment of the EO and framing it as amounting to "a shameless, full-bore Soviet-style politicization of American science that will smother what until now has been the world's preeminent scientific enterprise. Until this administration, the single overarching priority for public funding of research has been scientific excellence. That is why our country has been so successful in delivering life-saving and life-enriching discoveries." Dr. Ambros decries the devastating impact of political interference in grantmaking "based on a jumble of knee-jerk keywords, vague "priorities", and bogus "gold standards." Under Trump's ludicrous criteria, [Dr. Ambros'] 2024 Nobel Prize research using the nematode C. elegans probably would not have been funded because the little worm's sex is not 'binary'."

Stand Up For Science strongly condemns this unbalanced and dangerous approach, the effects of which will set in motion a cascade of damage that will undermine American science, safety, and global leadership for generations. Dismissing the health and economic benefits of federally funded research over decades, the EO is a direct attack on scientific integrity and independence, and a blow to the nation's ability to solve its most pressing problems.
"By requiring all funded grants to align with the 'President's policy priorities' the ecosystem of American science as we know it—the system that gave us smartphones, the internet, landed the first person on the moon, and leads the the world in biomedical advancement—is over. Plain and simple," says Stand Up For Science founder, Colette Delawalla. "Many of the 'President's policy priorities' are incongruent with decades of clear scientific evidence: sex is not binary; racism is a cause of health disparities in America; the climate is changing because of humans; vaccines are effective in preventing disease. These are facts, regardless of how Trump feels about them and the White House cannot simply erase the truth."

Stand Up For Science is activating an urgent response—mobilizing its volunteers and the public to voice dissent through grassroots activism and calls for legislators to act. Stand Up For Science has renowned scientists willing to speak to the press on the record on this matter. For security reasons, we have not listed them in this release, but welcome interested parties to contact media@standupforscience.net.

Colette Delawalla (Stand Up for Science Founder and Executive Director) is available to discuss the impact of this action on the broader effort to save science and call the public to action.

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About Stand Up for Science:
Stand Up for Science is a grassroots Washington, D.C. based 501(c)4 non-profit organization mobilizing the fight for science and democracy. We formed Stand Up for Science within days of executive orders breaking down federal science agencies. Weeks later, on March 7th, our first National Day of Action, we mobilized over 50,000 people at 170+ events across the world in support of science. Stand Up for Science has captured widespread national and international media attention, and federal scientists across multiple agencies (i.e., NIH, EPA and NASA) have chosen Stand Up for Science as the platform for their dissent against this administration. An opinion piece written by our founding leadership team is also available in Nature Human Behavior: “Why we organized ‘Stand Up for Science.’”

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Brian Lovett
Stand Up for Science
media@standupforscience.net

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