URGENT Public Comment Deadline Today: The Proposed Rule Change That Will Permanently Damage US Science and Research
Keep Federal Grants Peer Reviewed and Not Subject to Political Appointees, Scroll Down for Link and Draft Comments
The Public Comment Period Is Now Closed
Thank you all for engaging and making your voices heard. An estimated 500,000 comments were submitted with >94% of them being against the implementation of this rule. If you missed the public comment period I urge you to reach out to your representatives and follow other social media creators spearheading the fight against this rule. Stand Up for Science has been highly engaged in this area.
After several social media posts on this topic, the day is finally here - deadline for commenting. Why should you care? Well, Billions of taxpayer dollars are about to turned over to a structure that is reminiscent of Soviet Union style pseudo-science regulation which caused crop failures and generations of lost scientists, and such poor scientific education that the Soviet Union scientists that didn’t flee had to work in an academic desert putting the country a generation behind the rest of the world.
Today when grants are submitted for review, whether it’s a grant covering veterans health or basic research into how an immune cell responds in the presence of a new cancer therapeutic, they go to a review committee. These review committees are often academic professors in a similar field or people with deep knowledge on what it takes to deliver a good project and product for your dollar.
A dozen or so people (and not the same ones every year) spend a week or two of their time, on a limited stipend to determine the best science to go forward, often reading hundreds of grants and then debating them round-table style to make sure that OUR money is invested well.
This system has served the United States public well. Grant funds distributed by the NIH across all 50 states return an average of $2.5 to $8 to our economy per for every $1 granted. This makes it one of the best taxpayer investments made by our Federal Government and the return has been that the US is an international leader in the sciences.
Under the Trump administration by the direction of Russell Vought, co-author of project 2025, this is all about to change.
Buried in a 400 page document is a series of dangerous rule changes that give direct political appointee control over billions of taxpayer dollars removing public oversight or participation.
Vought’s new rule would take approval of grants away from the rotating committees of experts, US citizens who understand grants the best (and are not paid for their approval) and give it to a political appointee. This means any political appointee from any administration can be in charge of billions of taxpayer dollars meant to support our medical and health research engine.
In summary, the proposed OMB rule deliberately replaces expert peer review with political control over federal research funding, undermining scientific integrity and crippling the United States’ ability to generate reliable knowledge for medicine, public health, and technology. The United States is already experiencing a scientist brain-drain, and there are few to no scientist who feel that working under conditions set-up for theft and cronyism will be possible. This doesn’t just impact career research scientists, it impacts everything right down to high-school level science education.
The public comment deadline is today at 11:59 EDT, 8:59 PDT
Here is the link to where you can leave a public comment CLICK HERE, just scroll down and you can paste a response in the box.
Below are a few draft responses you can adapt to reflect your personal feelings on the subject.
You can copy‑paste and customize these for the official comment portal.
NOTE: Responses MUST be customized or they will be flagged and rejected.
“I oppose the proposed OMB rule that replaces scientific peer review with political control over federal research grants. For decades, the United States has led the world in biomedical and public‑health innovation because funding decisions were grounded in expert evaluation of evidence, not partisan priorities. This rule would allow political appointees to block or terminate research on any topic they deem ‘not in the national interest,’ including work on health disparities, vaccines, and other areas vital to patients and communities. It threatens the integrity of NIH, CDC, and other agencies, destabilizes long‑term research investments, and will cause direct harm to public health and the scientific workforce. I urge OMB to withdraw this rule in its entirety.”
“I am writing to strongly oppose OMB’s proposed overhaul of federal grantmaking. The rule’s vague standards and expanded rescission powers would enable the executive branch to cancel previously approved grants and punish lines of inquiry that do not align with current political narratives. History shows that putting politicians in charge of scientific judgments leads to disaster: under Trofim Lysenko, the Soviet Union replaced legitimate genetics with state‑approved pseudo‑science, causing crop failures, famine, and decades of lost progress. The United States must not repeat this mistake. Science funding must remain guided by peer review, transparency, and scientific merit, not ideology. Please reject this rule and preserve independent, evidence‑based grantmaking.”
“I respectfully request that OMB abandon its proposed rule shifting control of research funding from scientists to political appointees. This change imperils not only basic science but also essential services supported by nonscientific grants, including mental health, housing, education, veterans’ care, and Tribal programs. The rule would restrict international collaboration, constrain dissemination of scientific findings, and accelerate an ongoing pattern of cancellations and firings at NIH and CDC that is already damaging our public‑health capacity. If implemented, it will drive talented trainees away from research careers and undermine the U.S. role in global scientific leadership. The responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars demands evidence‑based, independent grant review. Please do not finalize this rule.”
If you still don’t have enough information as to why this rule might be terrible for the United States, please continue reading:
There are Major Structural Flaws In The Proposed Rule That Open Up Billions of Taxpayer Funds Dedicated To Health And Medicine To Corrupt Mismanagement:
Vague, politicized standards: Terms like “national interest” and “advancing presidential priorities” are undefined, allowing nearly any disfavored line of inquiry to be blocked or terminated without scientific rationale.[4][3][2]
No real checks or appeals: Grant rescission and program cancellation powers are concentrated in OMB and appointees, with no robust, independent appeals mechanism for researchers or institutions.[4][3][2]
Conflicting with basic scientific governance norms: Peer review becomes advisory rather than decisive, contradicting decades of practice across NIH, NSF, and other agencies that rely on subject‑matter expertise to allocate limited funds.[1][3]
Encouraging charlatanism and loyalty over competence: As the Lysenko case illustrates, when administrations reward people who “say what they want to hear, regardless of what the data says,” charlatans flourish and competent scientists are crushed.[2]
Destabilizing long‑term investments: Giving OMB broad rescission authority and policy‑driven termination power makes it irrational to commit to long‑horizon research programs, infrastructure, and training, even when they are clearly in the public interest.[3][4][2]
Cutting off international and interdisciplinary ties: Restrictions on foreign collaboration and cross‑sector grants undermine precisely the consortia needed for modern biomedicine, climate science, AI safety, and pandemic preparedness.[3][2]
How This Rule Change Will Impact Science In The United States: We Will Fall Behind the Developed World
Collapse of scientific independence: When promotion, funding, and program survival depend on aligning with the president’s narrative, scientists learn—like students under Lysenko to say “the stupid thing” on exams, even when they know it is wrong. This erodes the norm that data, not ideology, decides questions.[2]
Loss of leadership in key fields: The rule accelerates trends already visible: cancellation of at least 110 NIH funding announcements in infectious disease, vaccines, and health disparities; pulled support for mRNA therapies and vaccines; and cuts at CDC that have already weakened outbreak response. Other countries, notably China, are already surpassing the U.S. in registered mRNA clinical trials; if the U.S. politicizes and abandons these areas, it will forfeit leadership permanently.[2]
Training pipeline damage: With firings, forced resignations, and grant cancellations at NIH and CDC, young scientists see unstable careers and curtailed academic freedom; historians warn that once you lose a five‑year cohort of trainees, you cannot simply “restart” science later because skills, mentorship, and institutional memory are broken.[2]
Direct public‑health harms: Politically driven cuts at CDC have already hampered responses to measles outbreaks and other illnesses. A system where lawyers and non‑experts direct vaccine campaigns and program shutdowns—as described for flu vaccination spending will make U.S. health responses slower, less evidence‑based, and more dangerous.[2]
Structural risk to contentious topics: Areas like health equity, reproductive health, climate‑associated disease, gun‑violence research, and mental health become inherently precarious, because they are easiest to label “not in the national interest” and defund.[3][2]
Long‑term scientific stagnation: The Soviet case shows the trajectory: once a country sidelines genuine genetics and molecular biology, it misses entire eras of discovery hybrid crops, DNA structure, molecular biology and never fully regains parity. Analogously, a U.S. that kneecaps immunology, genomics, vaccines, and public health research will lag far behind in therapeutics and preparedness.[2]
Generational Destruction of The US Scientific Research Engine And Silences Scientists By Preventing Publication of Research Findings
This rule centralizes funding decisions in political appointees instead of scientists, putting roughly 40% of U.S. basic research (the federal share) under direct partisan control rather than expert peer review.[2][3]
This rule allows the administration to block or terminate research it deems “not in the national interest,” a vague standard already being used to suppress work on health disparities, mRNA vaccines and therapies, gender and sex‑related biology, and other politically sensitive topics.[2]
It cuts funding for international collaboration, restricting joint work with foreign scientists precisely when global cooperation is essential for pandemics, climate‑linked disease, and biotechnology advances.[3][2]
It restricts scientists’ ability to communicate findings, including support for publication and dissemination, which weakens transparency, slows clinical translation, and harms open science.[3][2]
It gives OMB explicit power to rescind previously approved research funds, making awarded grants unstable and turning long‑term projects into political hostages.[4][2][3]
This rule change also extends beyond science to cut or reshape grants for mental health, housing, education, veterans and Tribal nations, directly degrading the social and health infrastructure that research depends on and seeks to improve.[2]
Finally, this rule change normalizes the replacement of “legitimate science with a politically acceptable alternative,” echoing the Lysenko era in the Soviet Union. Under that leadership state‑approved pseudo‑science devastated genetics, agriculture, and public welfare for decades.[2]
Please follow up with a letter or call to your congressional representatives to help preserve the integrity of US Scientific, Medical, and Health Research.
References and Additional Reading
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/well/omb-scientific-grant-proposal.html
2. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/omb-politicians-lysenko-science-history
3. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01779-z
4. https://www.science.org/content/article/trump-order-aims-politicize-decisions-federal-science-grants
7. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01295-6
Link worked and I successfully pasted the copy of your suggested text in the portal comment box. It took me 30 seconds or less.
EVERYONE DO THIS! It could NOT be any easier but the impact is powerful. 💙
Done. Extremely helpful to have actions in one easily accessible place.