Washington, DC — Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) today filed formal comments calling on the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to withdraw its sweeping proposed overhaul of the federal grantmaking system, warning that the rule would institutionalize political cronyism across over a trillion in annual public funds, destroy the independence of American science, and threaten the constitutional separation of powers.

The OMB proposed rule would require all discretionary federal awards to “demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities” and would essentially abandon merit-based federal grantmaking. Specifically, this rule would:

• Require senior political appointees to review most awards before they are issued and allow them to terminate multi-year existing grants at will.
• Explicitly forbid appointees from “deferring to peer reviewers or routinely ratifying their recommendations,” thus leading to funding decisions not based on scientific merit.
• Allow political appointees to bypass public notice requirements for funding opportunities under broad national security interest exemptions that are not defined in the rule.

“This is not a grant reform — it is a blueprint for a spoils system applied to federal science funding,” said Tim Whitehouse, executive director of PEER, noting that this proposed rule arrives at a time when independent oversight mechanisms designed to detect corruption and financial mismanagement have been systematically destroyed or weakened by this administration.

The administration is already targeting grants on important environmental and public health issues that conflict with its political narrative, such as climate science, vaccine safety, chemical safety, and emerging infectious diseases, while it is simultaneously working to steer federal money to political allies such as Elon Musk and family members of the president, according to PEER’s comments.

“Grant money has historically been distributed through programs authorized by Congress using statutory, regulatory, formula-based, or competitive criteria rather than direct tests of political loyalty,” added Whitehouse. “Placing all scientific research funding under the unreviewable discretion of political appointees is not an administrative reform, it is a recipe for corruption on a scale not seen even in this administration.”

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Read the PEER comments 

See the OMB proposal

PEER protects public employees who protect our environment, natural resources, and public health. We support current and former environmental and public health professionals, land managers, scientists, enforcement officers, and other civil servants dedicated to upholding environmental laws and values across federal, state, local, and tribal governments.