Stand Up for Federal Science Grantmaking
Call BOTH of your Senators.
Call ONE of the Representatives. Note: only one of these Congressmembers represents you. Find out which one here.
Call Script
Hi, my name is [Your Name], and I’m a constituent from [Your City, State]. I’m calling to urge [Senator Padilla / Senator Schiff / Congressmember Pelosi / Congressmember Mullin] to immediately take action to stop the OMB’s attacks on American science and research.
The proposed rule, “Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance (OMB-2026-10817), would massively expand political oversight of grants, including research funding, across government agencies. This replaces scientific experts with political appointees as the decision makers of federal research funding decisions, strangling independent science.
Scientific freedom is a core tenet of democracy. This proposal is a direct threat to scientific independence and evidence-based decision-making, with far-reaching consequences for research and public health.
WE NEED YOU, as a member of a branch of government equal to the Executive and mandated to allocate funding, to STOP VOUGHT from destroying our independent, federally-funded science.
Please act now to save the integrity of American science and research! Thank you!
Summary
The Office of Management and Budget in the Executive Office of the President is proposing a wide-ranging rule, “Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance (OMB-2026-0034)”, that would subject all federal science grant-making to political loyalty criteria, superseding any scientific advice. The advocacy group Stand Up for Science (SUFS) says that this rule “will end American science as we know it” because science grants would have to be approved by political appointees. SUFS adds that this “also threatens to catastrophically damage federal assistance that benefits all of society.”
The Ask
The administration, abetted by federal courts, has sidelined the federal employee unions that were once the bulwark for scientific integrity in federal rulemaking. In their place, Stand Up for Science (SUFS) is asking the public to oppose OMB’s proposed rule. SUFS provides an overview of OMB’s proposed rule, a guide to commenting, forms for contacting elected representatives by phone or email, and a portal for submitting comments to OMB.
Context
Since its founding, the federal government has supported scientific research, led in the post-WWII era by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. In addition, many federal government agencies empanelled scientific advisory boards under the Federal Advisory Committee Act to provide cutting-edge scientific expertise to the agencies. One function of federal science agencies has been to provide grants to fund scientific studies that support the agencies’ missions, grants that are informed by the scientists in NIH, NSF, and the advisory boards. However, the second Trump administration shut down a quarter of federal scientific advisory committees in its first six months and it is replacing qualified members of committees with politically aligned appointees. Provisions of the proposed rule threaten the whole structure of federal grant-making for science.
Background
Continuing its attacks on the fundamental principles of modernity that western societies have accepted since the Scientific Revolution and Age of Enlightenment (e.g., reason, empirical evidence, and the scientific method as the basis for decision-making), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the Executive Office of the President is now proposing a wide-ranging rule, “Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance (OMB-2026-0034)”, that would subject all federal grant-making to political loyalty criteria, superseding any scientific advice. Elizabeth Ginexi, 22-year former official of the National Institutes of Health, summarizes the proposed rule’s provisions.
Why Is This Happening Now?
The current administration is attempting to control not just what we the people can do and say but even what we can know. It is decommissioning satellites and ocean buoys to truncate the collection of scientific data that confirms the dangers of global warming, defunding universities and federal agencies that analyse the data and report findings that counter MAGA ideology-driven claims, and allows billionaire cronies to consolidate control of the media that reports findings to the public. In this way it hopes to implant its alternate facts in the public's perception and enshrine its version of history and reality that empirical observation, data collection, and scientific analysis contradict.
What We Can Do to Fight Back
We can comment on the proposed rule by July 13 to object to the politicization of federal grantmaking and the subversion of scientific expertise in the grantmaking apparatus. We can also call or write our elected representatives to raise their awareness of our concerns. The advocacy organization Stand Up for Science has provided a toolkit to inform and call scripts to facilitate taking action.
