When science answers to politics

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is proposing a suite of major rule changes in a 412-page document, titled “Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance,” that would fundamentally restructure how every federal science agency awards and administers research grants. 

Federal research grants are the primary way in which almost all major scientific advances in the United States materialize. Grant programs themselves don't really make headlines the way a rover landing, a new deep-field image from a telescope, or a first close-up of a distant moon does. However, those programs fund the astronomers who develop the theoretical models that tell us what we're looking at when a telescope resolves the atmosphere of a world 40 light-years away. They fund the geologists who can assess whether a rock sample on Mars contains evidence of life. They fund the graduate students and early-career researchers who are emerging leaders in the next generation of exploration. Without grant support, the headlines don't get made, because the scientists who would make them were never trained, never funded, and never given the freedom to follow the most exciting questions.

The sweeping changes proposed by the OMB would transfer grant selections from a peer-review process to a political-review process, isolate and suppress the American science community, and consolidate authority over federal science to a small and unaccountable group of partisan bureaucrats. 

Proposing to cut NASA program and mission funding is one thing. Defining what scientists can and can’t do with said funding based on political whims is a whole other form of undermining science. Congress explicitly has the power of the purse, and has thus far largely rejected cuts to NASA Science proposed by the OMB. But this time, the OMB is working around Congress to implement major changes that pose an existential threat to science in the United States.

Fortunately, there is another backstop in place. Rules like these can’t be adopted until the public has had a chance to review and comment on the proposed changes. This is where our Save NASA Science campaign can make a difference.

Rules built to last 

This proposal did not emerge from nowhere. Throughout 2025, the administration attempted to implement many of the proposed changes through executive orders and agency directives. These included grant freezes on politicized topics and to universities disliked by the current administration; attempts to impound certain unspent program funding; and immediate rejection of grants based solely on containing specific keywords. Courts stayed or reversed several early terminations, finding the administration had exceeded its authority. The new proposed rule is the OMB's answer to that resistance. Formalizing these policies through federal regulations would give them legal standing that executive orders don’t carry. A finalized regulation is binding on every federal agency uniformly, far harder to challenge in court, and can only be superseded by an act of Congress.

What this means for space science

The Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences (ROSES) system is NASA's primary investigator-driven research program, funding millions of dollars in grants each year across planetary science, heliophysics, astrophysics, Earth science, and biological and physical sciences. Currently, when a researcher submits a ROSES proposal, it is assigned to a panel of independent scientists who are active researchers in the relevant field. Panel members are selected for expertise and screened for conflicts of interest. Proposals are evaluated anonymously against published scientific criteria: the significance of the research question, the rigor of the methodology, the feasibility of the proposed work, and the qualifications of the proposal team. Panelists write individual evaluations, then discuss proposals together to reach a consensus ranking. Program officers — career civil servants with deep subject-matter expertise — use those rankings to make funding recommendations, balancing scientific merit against program priorities and available budget. The process is specifically designed to identify the most scientifically promising ideas, distribute resources across career stages and institution types, and insulate decisions from personal favoritism and political influence.

Each step in that process serves a purpose. Anonymous review reduces the weight of an applicant's reputation or institutional prestige. Conflict-of-interest screening prevents funding from flowing to personal networks. Published criteria make the basis for decisions transparent. Panel discussion surfaces perspectives that individual reviewers miss. Career program officers provide continuity and field-level judgment that political appointees, who rotate with administrations, cannot replicate.

The proposed rules would supersede that process with mandatory review of all grant decisions by a senior political appointee who is explicitly prohibited from deferring to the panel's conclusions. The scientific criteria would, in practice, be overridden by a requirement that awards demonstrably advance an individual president's policy priorities, not the body of scientific work. 

The proposed rules also give these political appointees the ability to terminate any award at any time for any reason, only needing to cite that the grant no longer conforms to “agency priorities,” giving OMB direct oversight over which institutions receive grant funding. Another proposed change institutes a government-wide ban on any research that involves collaboration with researchers from certain other countries, even if that researcher lives in the United States. Additionally, researchers would be barred from using grant funding to pay for publishing fees associated with major scientific journals, to attend conferences to share their research, or to conduct outreach to share their findings with the public, each an integral component of how scientific ideas mature, without prior written approval. And finally, there would be no appeals process for researchers whose work is affected by these changes.

And these are just a handful of the changes proposed by OMB. You can view a detailed tracked-changes comparison of the proposed changes on our Federal Grant Making Rule dashboard.

All told, these changes would not merely slow down some applications; they would change what science gets done. If certain topics become presumptively disqualified, scientists learn not to propose them. If international collaborators become a liability, proposals are redesigned to exclude them. If peer review no longer determines outcomes, the incentive to do peer-review-worthy science is replaced by the incentive to anticipate political preferences.

What you can do 

These rules must undergo a 45-day public review process under the Administrative Procedure Act. This gives researchers, scientists, and the interested public an opportunity to review the changes and submit written comments detailing their views on how the proposal will affect them.

Public comments are a meaningful part of this process. These comments become part of the public record and build substantive opposition that can shape whether the regulations are finalized, changed, or overturned. A large volume of thoughtful, individual comments signals to OMB, Congress, and the courts that these changes are controversial and harmful to the public trust.

Whether you are a professional scientist or not, if you feel a connection to space science and exploration, you have reason to submit a comment. The most effective comments are personal and specific. Here are three steps to crafting a meaningful public comment:

1. Introduce yourself. State your name, your role, and why you are writing. You do not need to prove your credentials; a PhD student, a research administrator, or a member of the public all have standing. Then, in your own words, state plainly that you wish OMB to withdraw these proposed changes.
2. Name the specific provision(s) you oppose. Point to the specific sections and explain why they would impact you. You do not need to quote the rule, but it is helpful to reference specific sections (more on that below). For example, “I am writing to oppose the proposed revisions to §200.205 and §200.454. Section §200.205 would require a senior political appointee to personally review and approve every grant, with authority to override peer review…”
3. Explain why you oppose these changes. Explain what would happen to you, your lab, your institution, your field, or the research you care about. The more specific and quantified, the better. For example: "My lab has three international collaborators on a current NASA award. Under § 200.220, that partnership would be presumptively prohibited, and years of joint work would be lost." Or simply: "Federal science is funded by taxpayer dollars, and under rules §200.204, §200.205, §200.340, and §200.461, I could be denied a trustworthy, peer-reviewed understanding of the science I paid to generate." 

To help you reference the right provision, here are some key sections identified as the most damaging to science in the proposed rule.

Here is a direct link to submit a comment. The comment deadline is July 13, 2026. Every substantive comment becomes part of the permanent public record, and OMB must respond to it before the rule can be finalized.

The United States has led in science for almost a century thanks to the rigor of peer-reviewed, merit-based science standards. These proposed changes would undo that successful system and put politics in charge of which science is funded. But the Save NASA Science campaign has proven that the public can successfully push back on proposals to cede leadership in space. Your support is needed now more than ever. We’ve beaten the FY 2026 budget cuts and are on the verge of doing so again for FY 2027. Together, we can safeguard the future of science and discovery.