The Trump administration proposed an OMB rule in late May that would require federal research grants from NIH, NSF, DOE, and NASA to be approved by political appointees instead of being awarded based primarily on independent expert peer review. The proposal has generated massive pushback — it received 90,000 public comments by mid-July — because it would give the White House unprecedented control over scientific funding that has operated on merit-based peer review since the end of World War II. Critics argue this would damage America's global scientific leadership by politicizing research funding in ways that could favor ideologically aligned work over the best science. The rule change also extends to education and infrastructure grants beyond pure research.