Most people hear “federal grants” and think about scientific research.
Cancer treatments. Environmental monitoring. Public health. University labs.
Those are certainly at stake under the Office of Management and Budget’s proposed overhaul of how the federal government awards grants. But focusing only on science misses the larger story.
The proposal would dramatically expand political control over how taxpayer dollars are distributed — for not only scientific research, but also education, conservation, public health, disaster relief, and other essential state and local programs.
For generations, Congress has built systems designed to ensure that taxpayer dollars are awarded through transparent processes, informed by expertise and insulated from political pressure. No matter what the grants support, the principle has remained the same: decisions should be based on merit and the public interest — not political loyalty.
The Trump administration’s proposed rule would fundamentally change that.
In comments submitted to the Office of Management and Budget, PEER warned that the proposal would give political appointees unprecedented authority to override independent grantmaking processes, weakening safeguards that exist to prevent favoritism, retaliation, and political interference. This proposed rule strips away longstanding protections against corruption, such as open competition for federal funding and merit-based peer-review. Instead of strengthening accountability, the proposal would concentrate enormous discretion over federal funding in the hands of political leadership.
The implications reach far beyond the scientific community.
Federal grants help communities recover from disasters, support universities developing new medical treatments, conserve wildlife and public lands, strengthen drinking water systems, and fund countless other public priorities. Decisions about who receives that funding — and why — shape communities across the country.
Transparent and non-partisan standards help ensure those decisions are based on expertise and public need. They also make it possible to identify and challenge favoritism when it occurs. Expanding political discretion makes both goals harder to achieve.
The proposal is also part of a broader pattern.
Over the past year, we have seen repeated efforts to weaken the independent institutions that help ensure our government serves the public rather than political interests. Career civil servants have come under increasing political pressure. Scientific expertise has been sidelined in favor of ideological priorities. Longstanding oversight mechanisms have been weakened. PEER has repeatedly documented these developments because they point in the same direction: concentrating more authority over public resources in the hands of political leadership.
Science offers one of the clearest examples of what could be lost.
America became the world’s leader in scientific research because funding decisions were largely based on peer review, scientific merit, and independent expertise. Researchers competed based on the quality of their work — not on whether their findings aligned with the political priorities of the administration in power.
PEER’s comments explain how the proposed rule would weaken those protections by allowing political officials to exert greater influence over funding decisions that have traditionally been insulated from partisan considerations. The rule explicitly politicizes federal funding, by placing the final say over grants in the hands of political appointees, giving political leadership latitude to terminate grants at-will with no opportunity for appeal, and explicitly requiring federally funded projects to align with the administration’s agenda.
If the proposal is finalized, the consequences will extend well beyond laboratories.
Communities seeking disaster resilience funding, conservation organizations protecting wildlife habitat, public health agencies responding to emerging threats, universities conducting basic research, and state and local governments delivering essential services could all find themselves navigating a grantmaking process where political considerations increasingly outweigh objective evaluation.
This is far more than an administrative change.
It is a fundamental shift in who controls public resources — and how those decisions are made.
Corruption rarely begins with dramatic headlines. More often, it begins quietly, by changing the rules that determine who receives public resources and who does not.
The OMB proposal deserves careful scrutiny for that reason alone.
When political leaders gain greater control over taxpayer dollars while independent oversight grows weaker, the effects extend beyond science. They reach the public’s ability to trust that government funding decisions are based on merit rather than politics.
Christine Schulman is a rising 3L at the University of Virginia School of Law and a legal intern at PEER.