A government funding bill released by the Senate Appropriations Committee this week would temporarily block a controversial White House proposal to overhaul how federal agencies award grants — a rule that has drawn hundreds of thousands of public comments and threats of litigation, with particular stakes for university research funding.
The continuing resolution, released Aug. 2, would fund the government through Dec. 11 while preventing the Office of Management and Budget’s proposed rewrite of the “Uniform Guidance” — the regulation governing federal grants, cooperative agreements and pass-through awards across dozens of agencies — from taking effect during that window. The rule is currently slated to take effect Oct. 1; if OMB finalizes it before the spending bill becomes law, the delay provision would still apply.
The proposed rule, published May 29, would represent the most substantial revision to federal grants administration since 2013. Among its changes: requiring approval from senior political appointees before competitive grants are awarded, a shift that would deemphasize peer review; making it easier for agencies to cancel grants after work has already begun; barring funds from going toward “woke” causes; and preventing grant recipients from collaborating with countries such as China. The rule stems from executive orders President Trump issued last year aimed at reshaping how federal money is distributed to research and grant recipients.
The scale of the affected funding is significant. The regulations would apply to roughly $200 billion a year in discretionary, competitive grants, and could also touch parts of the $900 billion a year in formula and block grants sent to state and local governments. The comment period drew 496,769 submissions, of which an analysis by Tech Policy Press found 94 percent in opposition.
Opposition has come from an unusually broad coalition. The American Council on Education (ACE) and more than 60 higher education associations warned the rule would shift grantmaking away from merit-based peer review and create funding uncertainty for colleges and universities. Russ Paulsen of Research!America raised concerns that the rule’s provision allowing agencies to cancel projects midstream could disrupt clinical trials already underway, saying it would be unjust to volunteer patients who “have put in volunteer hours and at some point taken on risk, probably to themselves.” Even some conservatives have objected: George Mason University economist Alex Tabarrok called the proposal “a nightmare of petty low-trust review of the kind that is already drowning science.”
Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) has been among the rule’s most vocal Republican critics, previously asking OMB to extend its comment period and writing that the rule would “impose new, burdensome requirements on award recipients that would harm small and rural communities, undermine scientific and biomedical research.” She welcomed the Senate spending bill’s delay provision, as did Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-Wash.).
The path forward remains uncertain. The Senate is expected to take up the continuing resolution this week, but the House already passed its own version on July 21 without any language delaying the OMB rule. The two chambers will need to reconcile the difference before any bill reaches the president’s desk. ACE Ais urging its members to keep pressing House lawmakers on the issue when they return from recess at the end of August, while the National League of Cities has similarly called on local governments to lobby Congress before a final rule — which OMB would need to publish by Sept. 1 to hit its October implementation target — is locked in.
