‘Complete shock and dismay’: scientists unite against Trump’s $1tn grant attack

A protest over threats to research funding at the University of Illinois Chicago. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images View image in fullscreen A protest over threats to research funding at the University of Illinois Chicago. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images ‘Complete shock and dismay’: scientists unite against Trump’s $1tn grant attack OMB proposal would upend entire grant-making system – and put vast sums into hands of political appointees It was a late Friday afternoon in Boston when Harvard School of Public Health professor Nancy Krieger, a social epidemiologist, received an email that would reshape the next year of her life. It was from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) – her nearly $1m grant to study how discrimination affects population health was canceled. “I’m like, what? What does this mean? I don’t understand? My grant has another year in it. I immediately reached out to the office that helps with grants to find out what was going on, and it led to a flurry of emails over the weekend – just trying to even find out what was happening. “It was complete shock and dismay.” From that moment, she had three jobs. First, to continue her work as a professor. Second, to deal with the litigation that suddenly engulfed her work. Third, to patch up the tumult, crushed morale and chaos that weighed on the people whose careers depended on this funding. Krieger’s was one of the first R-01 grant cancellations in the country – one example of the chaos sown by the billionaire Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” as the group ripped apart federal grant-making infrastructure under the banner of ending “woke” research on gender, race, equity and a slate of other keywords the administration found objectionable. It would not be the last – and the list of delayed and canceled grants could, and probably will, fill books. Now Krieger is at the vanguard of scientists speaking out about a new proposal from the office of management and budget (OMB) that attempts to ensnare nearly the entire federal grant-making apparatus in this same tumult. This May, Trump’s OMB quietly proposed a more than 400-page overhaul of the federal grant-making process which would, if formalized, institutionalize much of the upheaval seen in federal funding scientists have experienced over the past nearly two years. The proposal would put nearly $1tn in grant-making into the hands of political appointees by October. “It’s the entirety of the federal grant-making process,” said Sara Rosenbaum, professor emerita of health law and policy at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. “Healthcare, education, social services, environmental protections – it’s way, way beyond just research.” The proposal has sparked outrage and consternation among a wide array of organizations, with a dramatic increase in support from individual scientists and scientific organizations, who have come together to oppose a rule that could affect an almost unim