{"id":3500,"date":"2026-07-14T02:04:27","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T06:04:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/?p=3500"},"modified":"2026-07-14T02:04:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T06:04:27","slug":"peer-warns-omb-grant-proposal-would-institutionalize-corruption-and-destroy-american-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/?p=3500","title":{"rendered":"PEER Warns OMB Grant Proposal Would Institutionalize Corruption and Destroy American Science"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) today filed formal comments calling on the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to withdraw its sweeping proposed overhaul of the federal grantmaking system, warning that the rule would institutionalize political cronyism across over a trillion in annual public funds, destroy the independence of American science, and threaten the constitutional separation of powers.<\/p>\n<p>The OMB proposed rule would require all discretionary federal awards to \u201cdemonstrably advance the President\u2019s policy priorities\u201d and would essentially abandon merit-based federal grantmaking. Specifically, this rule would:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Require senior political appointees to review most awards before they are issued and allow them to terminate multi-year existing grants at will.<\/li>\n<li>Explicitly forbid appointees from \u201cdeferring to peer reviewers or routinely ratifying their recommendations,\u201d thus leading to funding decisions not based on scientific merit.<\/li>\n<li>Allow political appointees to bypass public notice requirements for funding opportunities under broad national security interest exemptions that are not defined in the rule.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cThis is not a grant reform \u2014 it is a blueprint for a spoils system applied to federal science funding,\u201d said Tim Whitehouse, executive director of PEER, noting that this proposed rule arrives at a time when independent oversight mechanisms designed to detect corruption and financial mismanagement have been systematically destroyed or weakened by this administration.<\/p>\n<p>The administration is already targeting grants on important environmental and public health issues that conflict with its political narrative, such as climate science, vaccine safety, chemical safety, and emerging infectious diseases, while it is simultaneously working to steer federal money to political allies such as Elon Musk and family members of the president, according to PEER\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGrant money has historically been distributed through programs authorized by Congress using statutory, regulatory, formula-based, or competitive criteria rather than direct tests of political loyalty,\u201d added Whitehouse. \u201cPlacing all scientific research funding under the unreviewable discretion of political appointees is not an administrative reform, it is a recipe for corruption on a scale not seen even in this administration.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>###<\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/peer.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/7_13_26-OMB-2026-0034-Comment-Letter-PEER.pdf\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Read the PEER comments<\/a><\/em><em> <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/peer.org\/musk-taking-over-noaa-functions\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">See the OMB proposal<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) today filed formal comments calling on the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to withdraw its sweeping proposed overhaul of the federal grantmaking system, warning that the rule would institutionalize political cronyism across over a trillion in annual public funds, destroy the independence of American science, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[742],"class_list":["post-3500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ciencia-y-tecnologia","tag-vr-news-net"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3500\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}