A 412-Page Federal Rule Could Reshape American Science Forever. The Comment Period Closes in July 13, 2026.
1950: A radiochemist at the Argonne National Laboratory working with radioactive materials. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)
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The US scientific enterprise has been the most successful generator of technology advancement, intellectual property, and GDP in history. The internet, smartphones, vaccines, Google, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, fracking, batteries, and SpaceX are just some examples of technologies resulting from federally funded research and development. The success of these programs has been built on decades of experience to ensure that federal agencies operate independently of political agendas and financial conflicts of interest. On May 26, 2026, the Trump Administration announced a proposed rule that would fundamentally restructure how federal research dollars are awarded.
The rule proposes that senior political appointees review federally funded research results, instead of using the peer review system, where multiple outside experts review the scientific methodology, results, and conclusions for potential errors or conflicts. Further, the rule bans any collaboration with foreign researchers and stops all federal funding to publish scientific results for public transparency. The rulemaking has a 45 day open comment period, half the time that is typically given. This is not a change that impacts federal scientists, this would fundamentally change the way that science is conducted in the US. Such a rule risks surrendering American leadership in science and innovation in combination with cutting research funding and removing the US from participating in global efforts like the WHO and Paris Agreement.
What the Rule Actually Does
The Office of Management and Budget, which is in charge of federal budget regulations and agency management, published the 412 page rule proposal on May 29, 2026. The stated objective is to “improving transparency, accountability, and oversight.” The document is sweeping and comprehensive by changing the way federal grants are awarded. The rule makes four structural changes to how federal research is funded and controlled:
It formalizes political override authority: senior appointees can review and reject any discretionary grant, superseding career scientists and agency experts, and awards can be terminated at any time for any reason — a significant departure from the current standard, which limits termination to fraud or noncompliance.
It redefines the purpose of federal research: grants have historically been awarded to advance national security, public health, and foundational science, they must now advance the president’s stated priorities, with applicants screened for alignment before they are even eligible.
It dismantles US participation in the global scientific framework: the rule prohibits the use of any federal funds for collaboration with researchers in sanctioned countries, which is a list broad enough to cover most of the world’s major scientific partners. By doing so it is eliminating an exception that has long existed precisely because scientific diplomacy and collaboration serves American interests even where political ones diverge.
It restricts the communication of results: federal overhead funds can no longer be used to publish in peer-reviewed journals, present at conferences, or issue press communications, effectively reversing the existing open-access requirement that ensures taxpayers can read the research they funded.
Taken together, the rule also enables rejection of applicants based on vague “anti-American” affiliations and allows agencies to bypass public notice requirements for funding opportunities under broad national interest exemptions. The rule is removing the competitive, transparent grant process that has governed federal research for decades, despite its stated goal of improving transparency.
All federal discretionary research and development funding subject to this rule change if it is implemented. This includes research awarded to national labs, universities, private companies, and non-profit organizations. All together, over $110 billion of federal research funding would fall under this new rule. The figure below shows how much money is at stake in various agencies across the federal government.`
Economic Consequences in the United States
The US scientific enterprise has been a staple of American dominance in the industrial revolution and tech booms. It is estimated that for every dollar invested in federal R&D, society gains between $5-$20 of benefit. A 2023 study out of Texas A&M and the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found that government-funded research accounts for roughly one-fifth of all business-sector productivity growth since World War II, with social returns estimated between 140 and 210 percent. A significant portion of the US’s GDP has been a result of intellectual property and technological commercialization resulting from federally funded science at national labs and universities. Overhauling the scientific peer review system that has been in place and refined internationally will threaten the US’s status as a technology leader, which is already being accelerated by deepening federal funding budget cuts.
University Lab to Market: The Pipeline This Rule Threatens
The Bayh-Dole Act was passed in 1980 to allow universities to patent inventions from research, and sell those licenses to private companies, so they earn a share of the royalties. This act incentivizes universities to commercialize technologies they have developed using federal funds to benefit the US economy and society as a whole. The Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council estimates that the law has resulted in approximately $1 trillion in economic benefits and over 17,000 start-up companies. The continued success of university research hinges on continued federal funding and credibility for university laboratories.
While the OMB proposal doesn’t explicitly threaten the Bayh-Dole act, it creates a compliance minefield that universities will be required to navigate to continue receiving federal funding (at reduced amounts under the Trump Administration). Approximately $50-60 Billion in discretionary federal funding is routed to universities in the US, a significant percentage of the overall university research budget.
The rule does more than put universities at risk of bending to the political will of the party in charge, it also exposes institutions to federal investigations, grant terminations, repayment demands, and in certain circumstances, False Claims Act liability (which could disbar the entire university from federal funding).
The Brain Drain Risk
When scientific funding is subjected to political loyalty tests, researchers respond in predictable ways: they self-censor their proposals, or they leave for institutions where the work can proceed without interference. Policies that lead to political interference will create a “brain drain” from the United States, where the most talented scientists will be prevented from entering the US and American scientists will leave the country in search of freedom and funding. International students currently make up more than half of doctoral enrollment in many US STEM programs.Their departure would hollow out the graduate research pipeline that feeds American industry. Countries in the EU and Canada are already signaling their acceptance of international scientists with abundant funding.
A brain drain will harm the private sector and the American economy. Companies are reliant on the university to startup pipeline, and investors and venture capitalists follow university research clusters. Interfering with universities’ ability to conduct worthwhile research from start to finish will hinder private investment and innovation, and therefore the economy.
Closing Off American Science Hands the Advantage Abroad
Prohibiting international collaboration appears to be rooted in the goal of insulating American innovations from benefiting other countries. However, this rule as written will do the opposite. International collaboration is critical to the advancement of technology and human knowledge. Americans have long worked with other countries in space exploration, particle physics, and many experiments that are too expensive to fund domestically but will create results important for the fundamental advancement of science. Because of America’s leadership in this space we have attracted international talent to our university programs, and diplomatic relationships with other countries that have resources necessary for that science.
Prohibiting our cooperation with the rest of the world, and making it harder for international students to attend American Universities (and therefore pay tuition) will do the opposite of protecting our innovations. International talents will no longer attend universities here and domestic students will seek programs that are more collaborative and well-funded abroad. Companies around the world will not want to work with our researchers to purchase their IP or spin out companies, and will look elsewhere at universities that still have the resources and knowledge that this rule is restricting.
The irony is that a rule designed to protect American IP may instead push the researchers who create that IP, and the collaborations that commercialize it, to countries with fewer restrictions.
Paid for by Taxpayers, Hidden from Taxpayers
Transparency is a stated goal of the rulemaking, but will effectively make scientific research more opaque to the American public. Currently, there is a rule in place requiring all federally-funded scientific studies to be published in an open access journal so that taxpayers have access to the information that their money funded. Peer-reviewed journals almost always charge a fee to review and publish scientific studies, and typically charge an added fee for open-access articles (meaning there is no paywall for the reader).
The proposed OMB rule prohibits the use of federal funds to publish results in peer-reviewed journals, meaning researchers would need to raise funds another way to publish in prestigious peer-reviewed journals or would have to publish behind paywalls or not at all where taxpayers cannot access their findings.
Not only does this make it more difficult for taxpayers to access scientific results, it makes it more difficult for private technology companies from accessing information that is necessary to innovate and commercialize new technologies.
Scientific Merit vs. Political Loyalty
Proponents of the rule claim that executive supervision enhances fiscal responsibility and restricts the allocation of resources toward projects perceived as ideologically biased or inherently hazardous. However, Congress has repeatedly appropriated funds for science agencies with the expectation that those funds would be administered through merit-based, expert-driven processes insulated from political interference through career civil servants who are experts in their field. This rule attempts to override that expectation administratively, without new legislation. Accountability and merit are not in opposition as the Trump administration insinuates through this rulemaking. The existing peer review system is an accountability mechanism, built by a global network of scientists and refined over 70 years.
The peer review system isn’t a rubber stamp for any research scientists want to pursue. While imperfect, it’s a conflict-of-interest firewall. Reviewers are screened for prior collaborations and conflicts of interest with applicants, panels are structured to prevent disciplinary insularity, and majority self-citation is flagged as a disqualifying bias (the OMB rule’s citations are almost entirely self-cited). Under the proposed rule, a political appointee faces none of those constraints, can override them, and is by definition selected for alignment with the administration’s priorities rather than scientific independence.
No investor would accept a due diligence process run by someone with a financial stake in the outcome, yet that is the oversight model this rule proposes for $110 billion in public research funds paid by tax dollars.
What History Says About Politicizing Science
The American scientific enterprise emerged after WWII and has hinged on a robust and credible scientific system, built from peer review and international collaboration. The mechanism by which political interference causes science leadership to migrate is not theoretical. it is well-documented in distant and recent history. When Hungary systematically tightened political control over its universities after 2010, it triggered an exodus of researchers. When Brazil’s government cut science funding and questioned academic independence between 2019 and 2022, its universities fell in global rankings as talent moved to Europe. Turkey’s post-2016 purges of university faculty produced a generation of researchers who built their careers in Germany, the UK, and the United States instead. In each case, the countries that imposed the restrictions lost scientific standing they have yet to recover. The US is not immune to this dynamic. Canada, the UK, and Germany are already running active recruitment campaigns targeting American researchers unsettled by the current environment. The talent does not disappear, it moves to the places with the most resources.
The countries that win the next century will be the ones that let their best minds follow the best ideas — not the ones that make every grant a political loyalty test.