President Trump’s administration has proposed wide-ranging changes to the system for awarding federal research grants.Credit: Anna Rose Layden/GettyScientists are raising the alarm about a far-reaching White House proposal that could fundamentally recast federally funded science. The proposed rules would put political appointees in control of all federal grants; de-emphasize peer review; place more restrictions on meeting attendance for grant holders; limit collaborations between federally funded US scientists and overseas colleagues; and restrict federal financial support for the publication of US scientists’ results in scientific journals.The 412-page proposal, issued by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on 29 May, applies to all federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — the world’s largest funder of biomedical research — and the National Science Foundation (NSF). The OMB says that it aims to “improve transparency, accountability, and oversight” of federal funds. In a statement, an OMB spokesperson said that “federal grants were already politicized to promote a far-left agenda”. The administration of US President Donald Trump plans to implement the proposal on 1 October.How Trump is following Project 2025’s radical roadmap to defund scienceJust four days after it was posted, the proposal had drawn more than 3,500 comments from the public. Comments reviewed by Nature were almost all critical, although some agreed that reform was needed. Many comments were from prominent researchers, such as leading oceanographer Dawn Wright, chief scientist of Esri, a global company specializing in geographic information system software, in Redlands, California, who wrote that the proposal “is dangerous and absolutely politicizes science”. Suzanne Segerstrom, a biostatistician at Oregon State University in Corvallis, wrote: “This regulation harms taxpayers, harms Americans’ health, and contravenes federal policy. I am in strong opposition.”On 2 June, some 2,000 people attended an emergency virtual meeting to mobilize opposition to the proposal. A variety of speakers at the meeting, which was organized by the advocacy group Stand Up for Science (SUFS), implored attendees to submit comments against the rule.The proposal is a “brazen power grab by the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and will make future discoveries less likely”, said Sudip Parikh, the chief executive officer of scientific society American Association for the Advancement of Science, in a statement. The American Society for Cell Biology described it as a “massive threat to American science”.Many policy specialists say that the proposal could be the most momentous yet from an administration that has already had substantial effects on US research. “I think people understand this is the big one,” says psychologist Colette Delawalla, director of SUFS, which is based in Atlanta, Georgia. “If it gets through, we’re screwed.”Power for political appointeesHistorically, US research grants have been managed by career civil servants, many of them scientists. But an executive order signed by Trump in August 2025 directed federal agencies to give political appointees oversight of grants to ensure that they “advance the President’s policy priorities”.Entire NSF science advisory board fired by Trump administrationThe latest proposal fleshes out these powers. Political appointees would conduct mandatory “pre-issuance reviews” of all discretionary grants, in which every proposal would be vetted for alignment with agency priorities and “the national interest”, a potentially broad standard. Appointees evaluating grants must use their “independent judgment”, the proposal says.Peer review, which has historically had a central role in deciding which grant applications win funding, would be subordinated. “Peer review recommendations remain advisory and are not ministerially ratified, routinely deferred to, or otherwise treated as de facto binding”, the proposal states.Terminations and suspensionsThe proposal would also formally expand agencies’ ability to terminate and suspend active grants, allowing them to do so when the award “no longer advances [Federal] agency priorities or the national interest”. Agencies would be required to provide a detailed reason for nixing a grant and would not have to provide a process for researchers to appeal a termination. Last year, researchers sued the government over the mass terminations of grants by the NSF and the NIH, which led to the restoration of more than 600 grants. Scientists and advocates worry that the latest proposal could act as a shield against legal action over terminations.Another provision would allow agencies to prioritize institutions that have met the administration’s ‘Gold Standard Science’ guidelines and restrict organizations’ eligibility for funding for a variety of reasons, including failure to disclose foreign funding.International collaboration and conferencesSeveral sections of the proposal would have repercussions well beyond the United States. “Federal grant funds should not be used to support recipients and subrecipients that work in partnership with our foreign adversaries,” the document states. The proposal does not define “foreign adversaries” but cites an act called the Wolf Amendment, which has blocked NASA from collaborating with China since 2011.Scientists often use grant funds to attend conferences, but the proposal would require such spending to be approved by the agency at the time the grant is made. Elizabeth Ginexi, a former NIH programme officer who has written about the proposal, says that updating a grant with conference plans could be difficult. “Who knows what conferences their trainees are going to be attending years ahead of time?” Roberta Dollinger, a biochemist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison posted on the social-media site Bluesky.