Guide for Scientists: Public Comment on OMB Proposed Rule for Federal Financial Assistance
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Guide for Scientists: Public Comment on OMB Proposed Rule for Federal Financial Assistance
Guide for Scientists: Public Comment on OMB Proposed Rule for Federal Financial Assistance
Docket OMB-2026-0034 | Comment Deadline: July 13, 2026 | Published: May 30, 2026
Comment portal: https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/OMB-2026-0034-0001
Dear Colleague
Dear Colleague
On Friday, May 29, OMB published a 412-page proposed regulation in the Federal Register that codifies political appointee control over every federal science grant, government-wide, effective October 1, 2026. Peer review becomes advisory. Publication costs banned. Conferences require pre-approval. Active grants terminable without cause. The comment period closes July 13.
Your comment is not symbolic. It is the legal record courts will use to block the final rule. Silence in the record is evidence of acceptance.
This guide is a companion to my own comment on Docket OMB-2026-0034. The aim is to make it easy for any federally funded scientist to produce their own comment without starting from a blank page. Pick the sections and arguments that match your lab, your funding, and your discipline. Rewrite in your own voice. Volume of independent voices by July 13 is the goal, not uniformity.
1. What this is and why it is different from everything that came before
1. What this is and why it is different from everything that came before
On May 29, 2026, the Office of Management and Budget published a proposed binding regulation that would rewrite 2 CFR, the government-wide rules governing all federal grants, cooperative agreements, and other forms of federal financial assistance. This is not a memo, not agency guidance, not an executive order. It is a proposed regulation under the Administrative Procedure Act, with a 45-day public comment period and a target effective date of October 1, 2026.
The distinction matters. Executive orders can be reversed by the next president. Agency guidance can be withdrawn. A finalized regulation under 2 CFR carries the force of law, applies to every federal science agency (NIH, NSF, DOE, NASA, DOD, ARPA-H), and can only be undone through a new rulemaking process or congressional action.
2025 was the test run. Every action the administration took against NIH in 2025 (the grant terminations, payline elimination, NOFO collapse, keyword screening, forward funding squeeze, workforce reductions) was implemented through memos, executive orders, and discretion. Each was individually reversible and litigable. Each was a test of whether anyone would push back hard enough to stop the next step.
The courts pushed back in some cases. The First Circuit struck down the indirect cost cap. Congress inserted protective riders in FY2026 appropriations. The system held, partially. The administration learned from those losses. OMB-2026-0034 takes every ad hoc policy that worked and codifies it into binding regulatory text, government-wide, on a single date. This is the deployment.
As Elizabeth Ginexi wrote in her provision-by-provision analysis (https://elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of-key-changes-in-ombs-proposed): "What OMB is proposing is not a reform of grants management. It is a complete political control apparatus layered over every stage of the federal science funding lifecycle."
2. Why your comment matters, and why silence is dangerous
2. Why your comment matters, and why silence is dangerous
Under the Administrative Procedure Act, OMB must collect all public comments and respond to substantive comments in the final rule. That response becomes part of the formal administrative record. If OMB finalizes the rule without adequately addressing substantive objections, the administrative record becomes the evidentiary basis for legal challenge under APA Section 706(2)(A) (the "arbitrary and capricious" standard).
This is not theoretical. The First Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the 15% indirect cost cap on January 5, 2026, concluding that NIH violated statutory law and its own regulatory procedures. The administrative record, including public comments, was central to that ruling. State attorneys general used the comment record to build their case. The same legal pathway applies here.
Do not wait for the courts. The indirect cost cap was proposed in late 2024, struck down in January 2026. During that 14-month interval, the policy was operational. Universities absorbed the damage. Labs lost staff. Training programs contracted. Courts can vacate a regulation. They cannot restore grants never funded, papers never published, students never admitted, or scientists who left the country. The comment period exists to prevent the rule from reaching that stage.
Under the APA, a sparse comment docket is evidence of tacit acceptance. An agency can cite low participation to justify finalizing without substantive revision. Every PI, trainee (or unemployed), citizen, taxpayer (you do not need to be in the USA or a citizen) who stays silent makes the legal challenge harder for those who do not.
As one NIH program officer put it: "The comments will be ignored by the administration. But they will not be ignored in the historical record. Silence will be inferred as support."
3. The legal attack surface
3. The legal attack surface
The legal vulnerability of this rule is unusually broad for a single rulemaking.
Statutory conflicts (the strongest claims). Section 200.205 directly contradicts 42 U.S.C. 289a, which mandates peer review by qualified experts as the basis for NIH funding decisions. The rule explicitly forbids appointees from deferring to those experts. Section 200.461 conflicts with the 2022 OSTP public access memorandum, which requires federally funded research to be freely available, while simultaneously making publication costs unallowable. These are not ambiguous tensions. They are direct contradictions between a proposed regulation and existing statutory and executive mandates.
Arbitrary and capricious (APA §706(2)(A)). The rule claims three objectives: transparency, regulatory clarity, and reduced burden. Every major provision does the opposite. Eliminating binding peer review reduces transparency. Adding conference pre-approval, E-Verify mandates, political alignment documentation, and publication cost workarounds increases burden. Defining compliance around an undefined "Gold Standard Science" reduces clarity. The First Circuit used exactly this internal-contradiction logic to strike down the indirect cost cap in January 2026. The preamble compounds the problem by citing Heritage Foundation reports and Manhattan Institute op-eds as its evidentiary basis rather than independent administrative or scientific assessments.
Void for vagueness. "Gold Standard Science" is required as a compliance benchmark but never operationally defined. "Anti-American values" is a disqualifying criterion with no measurable content. "National interest" exemptions from public posting requirements give the agency head unconstrained discretion. Each of these fails the basic due process requirement that regulated parties receive adequate notice of what conduct is expected.
Non-delegation and structural concerns. The rule centralizes grant authority in political appointees while stripping civil service protections (via Schedule F) from the career staff who historically exercised that authority. OMB is also claiming direct binding regulatory authority over all agencies through a 2 CFR restructure, raising questions about whether OMB has the statutory authority to override agency-specific enabling statutes (the PHS Act, the NSF Act, the DOE Organization Act) through a uniform grants regulation.
First Amendment concerns. Section 200.450 prohibits "issue advocacy" on federal funds. Section 200.421 restricts public communications. Combined with the content-based criteria in Section 200.205 (blocking awards touching on "the sex binary," immigration, or "anti-American values"), these provisions function as viewpoint-based restrictions on federally funded speech. Viewpoint discrimination triggers strict scrutiny, the highest bar in First Amendment law.
Impoundment Control Act. GAO already found NIH in violation (B-337203, August 2025). The terminate-at-will provision (§200.340) and the conference/publication restrictions create new mechanisms for effectively impounding appropriated funds without formally withholding them. If the rule makes it functionally impossible to spend appropriated money on research activities (publishing, conferences, journals, international collaboration), the effect is impoundment by regulation.
The aggregate problem. Any single provision might survive judicial review in isolation. The cumulative architecture is what makes the rule vulnerable. It simultaneously claims transparency while eliminating it, claims burden reduction while increasing it, overrides multiple statutory mandates, imposes viewpoint-based content restrictions, vests unreviewable discretion in political appointees, and relies on partisan advocacy documents as its evidentiary foundation. A court reviewing the rule holistically can see the pattern that each individual provision obscures.
The comment period is where you build the record on every one of these threads. Each substantive comment that identifies a specific statutory conflict or internal contradiction is a brick in the litigation wall.
4. The 19 provisions that affect your laboratory
4. The 19 provisions that affect your laboratory
The provisions below are organized by how they affect the daily work of a federally funded PI. Each includes the regulatory section number. When you write your comment, begin each point with the section number in brackets (e.g., [200.205]).
How your grants are funded
How your grants are funded
Political appointee pre-issuance review (Section 200.205). Senior political appointees must conduct a "pre-issuance review" of every discretionary grant before it is awarded. These appointees are explicitly forbidden from deferring to peer reviewers or routinely ratifying their recommendations. Awards must "demonstrably advance the President's policy priorities." The criteria include blocking awards touching on denial of "the sex binary in humans," illegal immigration, or anything deemed to "promote anti-American values."
The transparency framing sounds reasonable until you read that the criteria are whatever the appointee decides they are, with no obligation to follow the scores assigned by the scientists who actually reviewed the proposal.
For your comment: if you have served on an NIH study section, describe what peer review actually involves (conflicts of interest screening, structured scoring criteria, summary statements) and contrast it with what this provision substitutes.
Peer review reduced to advisory status (Section 200.205(d)). The rule states that peer review recommendations "remain advisory and are not ministerially ratified, routinely deferred to, or otherwise treated as de facto binding." This dismantles the post-WWII system in which independent expert peer review was the primary measure of scientific merit at NIH, NSF, DOE, NASA, and nearly every science agency. Before 2025, there were only two political appointees at NIH, and even these (the NIH and National Cancer Institute directors) were accomplished scientists. The proposed rule gives nonexpert appointees veto authority over the judgment of hundreds of study sections comprising thousands of domain experts.
For your comment: name the specific technical expertise required to evaluate proposals in your field. No political appointee possesses it.
"Gold Standard Science" as an undefined compliance test (Section 200.205). All grants must include benchmarks for compliance with "Gold Standard Science" (tied to Executive Order 14303). The standard is never defined in any concrete or measurable way. Agencies must prioritize institutions that have "demonstrated success in implementing Gold Standard Science." Because the standard has no operational definition, the administration retains unguided discretion over what qualifies.
Active grants terminable at any time without cause (Section 200.340). Active grants, including multi-year awards mid-project, can be terminated because a political appointee decides the work no longer aligns with agency priorities. No finding of misconduct, fraud, or noncompliance is required. No appeals process. Between 2012 and January 2025, NIH terminated fewer than six grants midstream in thirteen years. Since February 2025, HHS has terminated over 1,392 NIH grants totaling $539 million in unliquidated obligations (CRS, April 2026). This provision converts that unprecedented pattern into permanent regulatory authority.
This is the provision that makes every other provision enforceable through fear. A PI who publishes findings inconvenient to the administration, collaborates with a foreign colleague, or studies a population the administration prefers not to acknowledge can lose funding mid-project with no recourse.
For your comment: if you hold an active NIH grant, describe what termination would mean concretely (staff laid off, patients withdrawn from studies, multi-year datasets abandoned, institutional debt from startup commitments).
Program design must align with presidential priorities (Section 200.202). Every new federal grant program must be designed with goals that explicitly align with administration policies. Science agencies must structure grant solicitations around the current administration's political agenda rather than scientific need, statutory mandate, or expert consensus.
Agency heads can exempt competitions from public notice (Section 200.204). A federal agency head can approve exemptions from the requirement to post funding opportunities on Grants.gov when "publicly announcing an opportunity would pose a risk to national security or is in the national interest of the United States." The phrase "national interest" has been used expansively by this administration and could justify conducting grant competitions outside public view.
How you do your science
How you do your science
Publication costs presumptively unallowable (Section 200.461). All journal publication costs, including article processing charges, open access fees, and page charges, are unallowable by default. Exceptions require a specific statutory mandate or case-by-case agency pre-approval. This directly conflicts with the 2022 OSTP memorandum requiring federally funded research to be publicly available. Open-access publication fees exist because the government required open access. Banning the mechanism while keeping the mandate is a defunding strategy dressed as fiscal responsibility.
For your comment: state the cost per paper in your field, the number of papers from your current award, and what happens to public access if you cannot pay those fees.
Conference attendance requires express pre-approval (Section 200.432). The current presumption that conference attendance related to grant work is a standard allowable cost is eliminated. Every conference must be pre-approved by the agency and written into the award terms. Conferences not anticipated when the award was issued cannot easily be added. The agency has full discretion to deny approval. The framing is fiscal accountability. The mechanism is information control.
For your comment: describe one collaboration, one corrected experimental direction, or one trainee career outcome that originated at a conference.
Journal subscriptions categorically unallowable (Section 200.454). Subscriptions to professional, academic, and technical journals are made categorically unallowable as direct costs on federal awards. Combined with Sections 200.461 and 200.432, the cumulative effect severs every mechanism by which federally funded scientists disseminate findings, receive critique, and access the work of peers.
Professional memberships require prior approval (Section 200.454). Professional society memberships are only allowable if they are "necessary to fulfill the award requirements" and receive prior written agency approval.
Public communications restricted (Section 200.421). All public relations costs are unallowable except those explicitly required by statute, restricting researchers from communicating findings to the public or press.
"Issue advocacy" prohibited (Section 200.450). Federal grant funds cannot be used for any messaging that promotes or opposes a "particular social, political, or public policy position unrelated to the statutory objectives" of the award. Given that the rule's preamble characterizes climate science, public health research, and equity research as "divisive ideologies," this prohibition could be deployed to bar researchers from speaking publicly about their own federally funded findings.
International collaboration
International collaboration
Broad prohibition on international collaboration (Section 200.220). Federal funds, including indirect costs, cannot support bilateral or multilateral collaboration with "covered foreign countries" or affiliated entities. The rule extends beyond China to all countries on broad sanctions lists, covering travel, research activities, technical assistance, and allocable indirect costs.
American science leads because the best scientists come here and collaborate here. Cutting off collaboration does not protect American science. It hands the competitive advantage to nations that are actively recruiting the collaborators we turn away.
For your comment: if you have international collaborators, co-authors, or trainees, describe what those relationships produce and what losing them would cost U.S. competitiveness in your field.
Domestic-first framework for research awards (Section 200.202(e)). Any international element in a federally funded R&D grant must be affirmatively justified on a case-by-case basis. Foreign entities cannot receive R&D awards at all except with written approval from a senior political appointee.
Your institution
Your institution
DEI and related topics banned as grant conditions (Section 200.300). All federal award funds are prohibited from being used to "fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate" DEI/DEIA policies or practices, "gender ideology," or gender transition assistance for individuals under 19.
E-Verify mandated for all grant recipients (Section 200.303). All recipients and subrecipients must enroll in and use E-Verify for every employee and contractor working on a federal award. Any Final Nonconfirmation must be reported to the federal agency.
Applicants can be denied based on organizational affiliations (Section 200.206). Risk factors agencies may use to deny applications are expanded to include membership in or affiliation with organizations that "advocate for the overthrow of the United States Government" or "undermine public safety or national security."
OMB gains direct binding authority over all agencies (2 CFR restructure). The rule restructures 2 CFR to make OMB guidance a directly binding regulation on all agencies. Individual agencies can no longer shield their communities from any of these changes through their own implementing rules.
OMB gains oversight of which institutions receive grants (new reporting provision). OMB can require agencies to submit reports identifying specific recipients of federal awards over any period, giving the White House direct leverage over which institutions receive funding.
5. The internal contradiction you should name in your comment
5. The internal contradiction you should name in your comment
The rule names transparency as its first objective while eliminating every mechanism through which transparency operated. Replacing peer review with political appointee override eliminates the primary transparency mechanism. Making publication costs unallowable suppresses the mechanism by which findings enter the public record. Requiring conference pre-approval restricts venues where results are challenged and replicated. Making journal subscriptions unallowable limits access to the literature. Allowing grant termination without cause and without transparent criteria inverts accountability.
The Benton Institute noted that the preamble "cites Heritage Foundation reports, op-eds from the Manhattan Institute and City Journal, and Senate Republican committee reports as supporting authority" rather than independent scientific or administrative assessments.
Naming this contradiction in your comment matters because it creates the basis for an "arbitrary and capricious" challenge under APA Section 706(2)(A). If the final rule's provisions are internally inconsistent with its stated objectives, courts can vacate it.
6. How to write an effective comment
6. How to write an effective comment
The comment form at regulations.gov allows 5,000 characters of text plus up to 20 file attachments (docx, pdf, pptx, xlsx, 10 MB each). You can submit as an Individual, Organization, or Anonymous.
What makes a legally substantive comment
What makes a legally substantive comment
Not all comments carry equal weight under the APA. OMB must respond to substantive comments but may dismiss form letters or generic expressions of opposition. A substantive comment does one or more of the following:
Identifies a specific statutory conflict. The PHS Act (42 U.S.C. 289a) requires that NIH funding decisions be based on peer review by qualified experts. Section 200.205 forbids political appointees from deferring to peer reviewers. The 2022 OSTP memorandum requires public access to federally funded research. Section 200.461 makes publication costs presumptively unallowable.
Provides concrete evidence of harm. State your active grant numbers, your IC, the specific provisions that affect your work. Name journals, conferences, costs, collaborators.
Demonstrates internal inconsistency. Show how specific provisions reduce the transparency the rule claims to advance.
Proposes an alternative. Courts give more weight to comments that suggest a workable alternative rather than simply opposing the rule.
Structure for maximum effect
Structure for maximum effect
Begin each point with the relevant section number in brackets, as the Federal Register notice instructs (e.g., "[200.205] The mandatory pre-issuance review by political appointees conflicts with..."). This ensures your comment is cataloged correctly in the docket.
A note on AI tools
A note on AI tools
Agency staff will almost certainly use AI summarization tools to cluster and characterize submissions. This is not a reason to avoid commenting. It is a reason to be deliberate about structure. If you use ChatGPT, Claude, or any other tool to help draft or refine your comment, ensure the language that matters most (the provision number, the statutory conflict, the concrete harm) appears prominently and repeatedly enough that no summarization algorithm can bury it.
However, if your comment reads like a form letter or copy-paste template, it will be treated as one. Under APA practice, agencies can batch identical or near-identical comments into a single entry. Even two sentences about how a specific provision affects your lab, your trainees, or your patients counts as a unique substantive comment OMB must address individually.
7. Modular draft arguments you can adapt
7. Modular draft arguments you can adapt
Pick the provisions that apply to your situation. Replace bracketed placeholders with your own specifics. Rewrite in your own voice.
On political appointee pre-issuance review (Section 200.205)
On political appointee pre-issuance review (Section 200.205)
[200.205] The requirement that senior political appointees conduct pre-issuance review of every discretionary grant, with an explicit prohibition on deferring to peer reviewers, conflicts with the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 289a), which establishes peer review by qualified experts as the basis for NIH funding decisions. The United States built the world's preeminent biomedical research enterprise on merit-based peer review precisely because non-expert political override produces funding decisions optimized for political palatability rather than scientific impact. As a PI holding [number] active NIH grants in [your field], the effect of this provision is to make every funded project, including ongoing multi-year research, contingent on political alignment rather than scientific merit.
On peer review reduced to advisory status (Section 200.205(d))
On peer review reduced to advisory status (Section 200.205(d))
[200.205(d)] Reducing peer review to explicitly advisory status, with political appointees forbidden from deferring to or routinely ratifying expert recommendations, reverses the foundational principle that has governed federal science funding since 1945. The proposed rule gives nonexpert appointees veto authority over the judgment of hundreds of study sections comprising thousands of domain experts. My field, [your field], requires [specific technical expertise] to evaluate proposals competently. No political appointee possesses this expertise. The provision will produce funding decisions that are scientifically arbitrary and legally vulnerable.
On publication costs (Section 200.461)
On publication costs (Section 200.461)
[200.461] Making publication costs presumptively unallowable directly conflicts with the August 2022 OSTP memorandum requiring that federally funded research be made publicly available at no cost to the reader. Article processing charges at journals in my field average [$X] per paper. My laboratory publishes approximately [Y] peer-reviewed papers per year. Under this provision, I would need [$Z] annually from non-federal sources to comply with the public access mandate while being prohibited from using federal funds to do so. The net effect is suppression of the scientific record.
On conference pre-approval (Section 200.432)
On conference pre-approval (Section 200.432)
[200.432] In the past [time period], I presented federally funded research at [name conferences]. Under this provision, each of those presentations would have required express agency pre-approval written into my award terms at the time of funding. Conferences not anticipated when the award was issued cannot easily be added. Scientific opportunities, including invited talks, workshop participation, and emerging collaborations, cannot be predicted at the time of award. This provision gives political appointees gatekeeper authority over which scientific communities federally funded researchers can participate in.
On journal subscriptions (Section 200.454)
On journal subscriptions (Section 200.454)
[200.454] Making journal subscriptions categorically unallowable as direct costs eliminates a standard mechanism by which investigators access the scientific literature foundational to their work. My research requires regular access to [name specific journals or fields]. Combined with Sections 200.461 and 200.432, the cumulative effect severs every mechanism by which federally funded scientists disseminate findings, receive critique, and access the work of peers.
On international collaboration (Section 200.220)
On international collaboration (Section 200.220)
[200.220] My research involves active collaboration with [institution/country] on [scientific topic]. This collaboration is essential because [specific scientific rationale]. The blanket prohibition on using federal funds, including indirect costs, for collaboration with covered foreign countries would terminate this collaboration and [specific scientific consequence]. While legitimate national security concerns exist regarding certain foreign entities, this provision is sweeping enough to sever partnerships foundational to U.S. leadership in [your field].
On grant termination without cause (Section 200.340)
On grant termination without cause (Section 200.340)
[200.340] The authority to terminate active grants mid-award without a finding of misconduct or noncompliance creates an environment in which no PI can responsibly hire trainees, commit to longitudinal studies, or invest in infrastructure. I currently employ [number] trainees and staff on my active grants. Each of them made career decisions based on the reasonable expectation that funded awards would run their course. Between 2012 and January 2025, NIH terminated fewer than six grants midstream in thirteen years. Since February 2025, HHS has terminated over 1,392 NIH grants totaling $539 million in unliquidated obligations (CRS, April 2026). The proposed rule would convert this unprecedented pattern into permanent regulatory authority.
On the training pipeline (applicable to multiple sections)
On the training pipeline (applicable to multiple sections)
The combined effect of Sections 200.205, 200.340, 200.432, 200.454, and 200.461 falls disproportionately on trainees and early-career investigators. Graduate students and postdocs cannot attend conferences without pre-approval, cannot publish without non-federal funds, cannot access journals, and cannot trust that the grants supporting their positions will continue. In my laboratory, [specific example]. The 10-to-15-year training cycle from graduate admission to independent investigator means that damage to the pipeline now produces generational, not episodic, losses.
8. Model comment (text box version)
8. Model comment (text box version)
A complete model comment demonstrating how to structure a legally substantive APA comment is available for download alongside this guide. It references specific regulatory sections, identifies statutory conflicts, provides concrete evidence of harm from a working laboratory, and addresses the national security implications of the proposed provisions.
The downloadable version includes a 5,000-character text box version (for pasting directly into the regulations.gov form) and a 5-page PDF attachment expanding the arguments with a China competition analysis, void-for-vagueness challenge to "Gold Standard Science," and documentation of the preamble's reliance on partisan rather than independent sources. Use it as a structural template, not as text to copy. Independent voices in independent language are what build the administrative record.
9. What else you can do (parallel actions)
9. What else you can do (parallel actions)
Submitting a comment is the single highest-leverage action available right now because it creates the legal record. The following actions are complementary.
Contact your House representative and both senators. Ask specifically for peer review protections and grant stability language in FY2027 LHHS appropriations. Markup timelines overlap with this comment period. Congress inserted protective riders in the FY2026 Consolidated Appropriations Act (Section 224, blocking the indirect cost cap; Section 240, capping multi-year obligations at FY2025 levels). The same mechanism can protect peer review. The Senate LHHS Subcommittee is chaired by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Ranking Member Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI). Arguments framed around medical progress, state economic impact, national security, and congressional intent are the arguments that move this specific committee.
Contact your state attorney general. State AGs have standing to challenge the final rule under the APA and led the successful indirect cost cap litigation. The Massachusetts AG led that challenge. AGs from states with major research universities (Massachusetts, California, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, North Carolina, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Texas) have direct standing because the rule threatens the economic base of their public university systems and academic medical centers.
Coordinate with your scientific society. Institutional comments from SfN, FASEB, BMES, AIMBE, AAU, APLU, AAMC, and COGR carry weight in the administrative record. Contact your society's government affairs office and ask whether they are preparing a comment. Your individual comment still matters because it provides specific evidence of harm that institutional letters cannot.
Forward this guide. The people most affected by these provisions are the least represented in policy feedback.
10. What to avoid
10. What to avoid
Do not submit identical comments. Form letters and copy-paste submissions are cataloged as a single comment. Rewrite in your own voice, even if you use the modular arguments above as a starting point.
Do not use DEI-flagged vocabulary. Terms such as "diversity," "equity," "inclusion," "underrepresented," "disparities" (in a workforce context), and "structural racism" are liabilities in any document entering the federal record under this administration. Translate equity arguments into capacity, stewardship, workforce sustainability, and merit-based language. The functional outcomes are identical. The risk profile is not.
Do not make the comment purely emotional or political. Courts give weight to comments that identify statutory conflicts, provide concrete evidence of harm, and propose alternatives. "This rule is terrible" is not a substantive comment. "Section 200.205 conflicts with 42 U.S.C. 289a because..." is.
Do not include personally identifiable information you do not want public. Comments and attachments are posted publicly on regulations.gov. Name, institution, and professional details strengthen your comment. Social Security numbers, home addresses, and personal health information should not be included.
Do not wait until July 13. The comment period may feel long. It is not. Coordinating institutional responses, drafting substantive comments, and building the record takes weeks. Start now.
11. A note to graduate students, postdocs, and early-career investigators
11. A note to graduate students, postdocs, and early-career investigators
Your voice matters here, perhaps more than anyone's. You are the people most affected by the decisions this rule will encode, and you are the least represented in policy feedback. The comment form accepts anonymous submissions. You do not need to be a PI or have funding to comment.
The provisions hitting you hardest are specific and personal. Section 200.432 means you cannot attend a conference on your grant without express pre-approval. Section 200.461 means you cannot publish your work using grant funds. Section 200.454 means you cannot subscribe to the journals you need to read. Section 200.340 means the grant funding your position can be terminated at any time without cause. Say so in your comment. Name the conference you attended last year. Name the paper you published. Name the journal you need.
Public comment has changed NIH policy before. The BRAIN Initiative K99/R00 career transition awards exist in part because trainees and early-career scientists made the case that the pipeline was failing them. When NIH proposed the Grant Support Index in 2017 to redistribute funding, it was abandoned within a month after well-funded senior scientists mobilized while trainees stayed silent. The lesson is straightforward: the voices that show up in the record shape policy. Silence will be inferred as support.
12. Submission checklist
12. Submission checklist
[ ] Comment submitted at https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/OMB-2026-0034-0001
[ ] Each point begins with the relevant section number in brackets (e.g., [200.205])
[ ] At least one specific statutory conflict identified (42 U.S.C. 289a, OSTP 2022 memo, or other)
[ ] At least one concrete example of harm from your own laboratory or institution
[ ] Harm to taxpayers and citizens (including giving our technology lead to competition)
[ ] 5,000-character limit for the text box (attach a PDF or Word document for longer comments)
[ ] Attachments under 10 MB each, maximum 20 files
[ ] No personally identifiable information you do not want public
[ ] Submitted as Individual (recommended) or Organization
[ ] Deadline: July 13, 2026
13. Sources
13. Sources
Primary documents
Full proposed rule (Federal Register): https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/05/29/2026-10817/regulation-for-federal-financial-assistance
Comment submission portal: https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/OMB-2026-0034-0001
Expert analyses
Elizabeth Ginexi, provision-by-provision analysis: https://elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of-key-changes-in-ombs-proposed
Wiley Rein LLP legal analysis: https://www.wiley.law/alert-OMB-Proposes-Sweeping-Overhaul-of-Federal-Assistance-Regulations
Benton Institute analysis (preamble sourcing from Heritage Foundation/Manhattan Institute): https://www.benton.org/blog/omb-proposes-changes-federal-grant-administration
Mark Histed, "American Biomedical Science in 2026": https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/american-biomedical-science-in-2026
Mark Histed, "The Slow Dismantling of American Science" (Union of Concerned Scientists): https://blog.ucs.org/science-blogger/the-slow-dismantling-of-american-science-and-what-we-can-do-about-it/
News coverage
Science/AAAS coverage: https://www.science.org/content/article/white-house-seeks-tighten-political-oversight-grantmaking
Scientific American coverage: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/white-house-proposes-new-rules-giving-political-appointees-final-say-on-research-grants/
Inside Higher Ed coverage: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/science-research-policy/2026/05/29/omb-proposes-rules-establishing-political
KFF Health News (Norton and Histed quotes, political appointee analysis): https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/nih-grants-trump-political-appointees-agenda-alignment-peer-review/
Data and tracking
Jeremy Berg, Bluesky (NIH funding data and policy analysis, 14,000+ followers): https://bsky.app/profile/jeremymberg.bsky.social
Jeremy Berg, NIH Dashboard (grant obligation tracking): https://jeremymberg.github.io/jeremyberg.github.io/index.html
United for Medical Research, 2026 Economic Impact Report: https://unitedformedicalresearch.org/annual-economic-report/
UMR state toolkits: https://unitedformedicalresearch.org/nih-in-your-state/
Legal and legislative
GAO decision B-337203 (Impoundment Control Act finding): https://www.gao.gov/products/b-337203
Congressional Research Service, NIH Grants Policy (IF13131): https://crsreports.congress.gov
Companion guides
Senate LHHS FY27 Outside Witness Testimony guide: https://bioniclab.org/news/senate-appropriations-open-comments
NIH Strategic Plan RFI guide (NOT-OD-26-047): https://bioniclab.org/news/nih-rfi
Takashi D. Y. Kozai, Ph.D. Ernest E. Roth Professor of Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh Director, B.I.O.N.I.C. Lab
Forward this guide to colleagues through LinkedIn, your lab website, email, or Signal. Volume of independent voices by July 13 is the goal.
Docket OMB-2026-0034 | Comment Deadline: July 13, 2026 | Published: May 30, 2026
Docket OMB-2026-0034 | Comment Deadline: July 13, 2026 | Published: May 30, 2026
Submission link: https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/OMB-2026-0034-0001
Full proposed rule: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/05/29/2026-10817/regulation-for-federal-financial-assistance
Provision-by-provision analysis by Elizabeth Ginexi (former NIH program officer): https://elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of-key-changes-in-ombs-proposed
This guide is a companion to my own comment on Docket OMB-2026-0034. The aim is to make it easy for neuroscience colleagues, and any federally funded scientist, to produce their own comment without starting from a blank page. Pick the sections and arguments that match your lab, your funding, and your discipline. Rewrite in your own voice. Volume of independent voices from working scientists is the goal, not uniformity.
1. What this is and why it is different from everything that came before
1. What this is and why it is different from everything that came before
On May 29, 2026, the Office of Management and Budget published a proposed binding regulation in the Federal Register that would rewrite 2 CFR, the government-wide rules governing all federal grants, cooperative agreements, and other forms of federal financial assistance. This is not a memo, not agency guidance, not an executive order. It is a proposed regulation under the Administrative Procedure Act, with a 45-day public comment period and a target effective date of October 1, 2026.
The distinction matters. Executive orders can be reversed by the next president. Agency guidance can be withdrawn. A finalized regulation under 2 CFR carries the force of law, applies to every federal science agency (NIH, NSF, DOE, NASA, DOD, ARPA-H), and can only be undone through a new rulemaking process or congressional action. As Elizabeth Ginexi wrote in her provision-by-provision analysis: "What OMB is proposing is not a reform of grants management. It is a complete political control apparatus layered over every stage of the federal science funding lifecycle."
Every policy action the scientific community has been tracking since January 2025 (payline elimination, forward funding, grant terminations, NOFO collapse, Schedule F, keyword screening, indirect cost cap attempts) was implemented through memos, executive orders, or administrative discretion. This rule codifies them into binding regulatory text, government-wide, on a single date.
2. Why your comment matters, and why silence is dangerous
2. Why your comment matters, and why silence is dangerous
Under the Administrative Procedure Act, OMB must collect all public comments and respond to substantive comments in the final rule. That response becomes part of the formal administrative record. If OMB finalizes the rule without adequately addressing substantive objections, the administrative record becomes the evidentiary basis for legal challenge under APA Section 706(2)(A) (the "arbitrary and capricious" standard).
This is not theoretical. The First Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the 15% indirect cost cap on January 5, 2026, concluding that NIH violated statutory law and its own regulatory procedures. The administrative record, including public comments, was central to that ruling. State attorneys general used the comment record to build their case. The same legal pathway applies here.
A second reason is historical. As one NIH program officer put it during the Strategic Plan RFI (NOT-OD-26-047): "The comments will be ignored by the administration. But they will not be ignored in the historical record. It is important to document where the scientific community stands on these issues. Silence will be inferred as support."
Jeremy Berg, former NIGMS Director and former Editor-in-Chief of Science, has tracked NIH funding policy shifts through Bluesky with more than 14,000 followers and has been quoted across national media. His consistent message throughout 2025-2026 has been that the structural changes to peer review and funding decision-making are acceptable only when institute directors are "selected carefully, without overt political considerations," and that "encouraging or forcing IC directors to prioritize funding decisions based on political as opposed to scientific and portfolio-based criteria is deeply concerning." The proposed rule does exactly what Berg warned against: it replaces IC director scientific judgment with mandatory political appointee pre-issuance review.
Jenna Norton, a program officer in the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, stated publicly that Bhattacharya's August 2025 guidelines "open the door to the politicization of NIH research. Peer review is fundamental and makes sure we are doing the best science. If you are going to ignore that, the political appointee gets to make the final call." The proposed rule formalizes exactly this structure in binding regulatory text.
Mark Histed, an NIH senior scientist at NIMH writing in his personal capacity, documented the full sequence of administrative actions in his January 2026 essay "American Biomedical Science in 2026" (published on Don Moynihan's Substack and reprinted by the Union of Concerned Scientists). Histed described how "the Trump administration has decreed grant awards must be approved by presidential political appointees," with "White House or HHS review steps added throughout the agency, from review of contracts, review of formerly-perfunctory employee term renewals, review of travel, and even review of weekly money disbursements to grantees, a process that has always been handled by civil servants without presidential interference." The proposed rule converts these ad hoc interventions into permanent regulatory architecture.
3. The 19 provisions that affect your laboratory
3. The 19 provisions that affect your laboratory
The provisions below are organized by how they affect the daily work of a federally funded PI. Each provision includes the regulatory section number. When you write your comment, begin each point with the section number in brackets (e.g., [200.205]) as instructed by the Federal Register notice. Not every provision will affect every lab. Pick the ones that match your situation.
Provisions affecting how your grants are funded
Provisions affecting how your grants are funded
Political appointee pre-issuance review of every grant (Section 200.205). Senior political appointees must conduct a "pre-issuance review" of every discretionary grant before it is awarded. These appointees are explicitly forbidden from deferring to peer reviewers or routinely ratifying their recommendations. Awards must "demonstrably advance the President's policy priorities." The criteria include blocking awards touching on denial of "the sex binary in humans," illegal immigration, or anything deemed to "promote anti-American values."
Peer review reduced to advisory status (Section 200.205(d)). The rule states that peer review recommendations "remain advisory and are not ministerially ratified, routinely deferred to, or otherwise treated as de facto binding." This dismantles the post-WWII system in which independent expert peer review was the primary measure of scientific merit at NIH, NSF, DOE, NASA, and nearly every science agency.
"Gold Standard Science" as an undefined compliance test (Section 200.205). All grants must include benchmarks for compliance with "Gold Standard Science" (tied to Executive Order 14303). The standard is never defined in any concrete or measurable way. Agencies must prioritize institutions that have "demonstrated success in implementing Gold Standard Science." Institutional prestige and historical reputation are explicitly deprioritized. Because the standard has no operational definition, the administration retains unguided discretion over what qualifies.
Active grants terminable at any time without cause (Section 200.340). Active grants, including multi-year awards mid-project, can be terminated because a political appointee decides the work no longer aligns with agency priorities. No finding of misconduct, fraud, or noncompliance is required. OMB frames this as analogous to "termination for convenience" in federal contracts, but grants are fundamentally different instruments. Researchers hire staff, enroll participants, and design multi-year protocols around the presumption that a funded grant will run its course.
Program design must align with presidential priorities (Section 200.202). Every new federal grant program must be designed with goals that explicitly align with administration policies and priorities. This is embedded in the regulatory text governing program design, meaning science agencies must structure grant solicitations around the current administration's political agenda rather than scientific need, statutory mandate, or expert consensus.
Agency heads can exempt competitions from public notice (Section 200.204). A federal agency head can approve exemptions from the requirement to post funding opportunities on Grants.gov when "publicly announcing an opportunity would pose a risk to national security or is in the national interest of the United States." The phrase "national interest" has been used expansively by this administration and could justify conducting grant competitions outside public view.
Provisions affecting how you do your science
Provisions affecting how you do your science
Publication costs presumptively unallowable (Section 200.461). All journal publication costs, including article processing charges, open access fees, and page charges, are unallowable by default. Exceptions require a specific statutory mandate or case-by-case agency pre-approval. This directly conflicts with the 2022 OSTP memorandum requiring that federally funded research be made publicly available.
Conference attendance requires express pre-approval (Section 200.432). The current presumption that conference attendance related to grant work is a standard allowable cost is eliminated. Every conference must be pre-approved by the agency and written into the award terms. Conferences not anticipated when the award was issued cannot easily be added. The agency has full discretion to deny approval.
Journal subscriptions categorically unallowable (Section 200.454). Subscriptions to professional, academic, and technical journals are made categorically unallowable as direct costs on federal awards. At institutions with constrained library budgets, this could make it difficult to conduct literature-based research.
Professional memberships require prior approval (Section 200.454). Professional society memberships are only allowable if they are "necessary to fulfill the award requirements" and receive prior written agency approval. Memberships in organizations whose primary purpose is lobbying or issue advocacy are unallowable.
Public communications restricted (Section 200.421). All public relations costs are unallowable except those explicitly required by statute, restricting researchers from communicating findings to the public or press.
"Issue advocacy" prohibited (Section 200.450). Federal grant funds cannot be used for any messaging that promotes or opposes a "particular social, political, or public policy position unrelated to the statutory objectives" of the award. Given that the rule's preamble characterizes climate science, public health research, and equity research as "divisive ideologies," this prohibition could be deployed to bar researchers from speaking publicly about their own federally funded findings.
Provisions affecting international collaboration
Provisions affecting international collaboration
Broad prohibition on international collaboration (Section 200.220). Federal funds, including indirect costs, cannot support bilateral or multilateral collaboration with "covered foreign countries" or affiliated entities. The rule extends beyond China to all countries on broad sanctions lists, covering travel, research activities, technical assistance, and allocable indirect costs.
Domestic-first framework for research awards (Section 200.202(e)). Any international element in a federally funded R&D grant must be affirmatively justified on a case-by-case basis by agency officials. Foreign entities cannot receive R&D awards at all except with written approval from a senior political appointee.
Provisions affecting your institution
Provisions affecting your institution
DEI and related topics banned as grant conditions (Section 200.300). All federal award funds are prohibited from being used to "fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate" DEI/DEIA policies or practices, "gender ideology" (defined as any theory that "denies the biological reality of sex or the sex binary"), or gender transition assistance for individuals under 19.
E-Verify mandated for all grant recipients (Section 200.303). All recipients and subrecipients must enroll in and use E-Verify for every employee and contractor working on a federal award. Any Final Nonconfirmation must be reported to the federal agency.
Applicants can be denied based on organizational affiliations (Section 200.206). Risk factors agencies may use to deny applications are expanded to include membership in or affiliation with organizations that "advocate for the overthrow of the United States Government" or "undermine public safety or national security."
OMB gains direct binding authority over all agencies (2 CFR restructure). The rule restructures 2 CFR to make OMB guidance a directly binding regulation on all agencies. Individual agencies can no longer shield their communities from any of these changes through their own implementing rules.
OMB gains oversight of which institutions receive grants (new reporting provision). OMB can require agencies to submit reports identifying specific recipients of federal awards over any period, giving the White House direct leverage over which institutions receive funding.
4. The internal contradiction you should name in your comment
4. The internal contradiction you should name in your comment
The rule's preamble identifies three objectives: "(1) improving transparency, accountability, and oversight for use of Federal funds; (2) clarifying the status of the 2 CFR regulatory text as an OMB regulation; and (3) reducing recipient burden."
Every major provision works against objective (1). Replacing peer review with political appointee override eliminates the primary transparency mechanism in federal science funding. Making publication costs unallowable suppresses the mechanism by which findings enter the public record. Requiring conference pre-approval restricts venues where results are challenged and replicated. Making journal subscriptions unallowable limits investigators' access to the literature. Allowing grant termination without cause and without transparent criteria inverts accountability. The Benton Institute noted that the preamble "cites Heritage Foundation reports, op-eds from the Manhattan Institute and City Journal, and Senate Republican committee reports as supporting authority," rather than independent scientific or administrative assessments. Naming this contradiction in your comment matters because it creates the basis for an "arbitrary and capricious" challenge under APA Section 706(2)(A). If the final rule's provisions are internally inconsistent with its stated objectives, courts can vacate it.
5. How to write an effective comment
5. How to write an effective comment
The comment form at regulations.gov allows 5,000 characters of text plus up to 20 file attachments (docx, pdf, pptx, xlsx, 10 MB each). You can submit as an Individual, Organization, or Anonymous.
What makes a legally substantive comment
What makes a legally substantive comment
Not all comments carry equal weight under the APA. OMB must respond to substantive comments but may dismiss form letters or generic expressions of opposition. A substantive comment does one or more of the following.
Identifies a specific statutory conflict. The PHS Act (42 U.S.C. 289a) requires that NIH funding decisions be based on peer review by qualified experts. Section 200.205 of the proposed rule forbids political appointees from deferring to peer reviewers. Name the conflict. The 2022 OSTP memorandum (the "Nelson memo") requires public access to federally funded research. Section 200.461 makes publication costs presumptively unallowable, creating a direct conflict with the public access mandate.
Provides concrete evidence of harm. State your active grant numbers, your IC, the specific provisions that affect your work. If the publication cost ban would prevent you from disseminating findings, say so and name the journals and approximate costs. If conference pre-approval would have blocked presentations you gave this year, name the conferences. If the international collaboration ban would sever active collaborations, name the collaborating institutions and the scientific rationale.
Demonstrates internal inconsistency. The rule claims transparency as its first objective. Show how the specific provisions reduce transparency.
Proposes an alternative. Courts give more weight to comments that suggest a workable alternative rather than simply opposing the rule.
Structure your comment for maximum effect
Structure your comment for maximum effect
Begin each point with the relevant section number in brackets, as the Federal Register notice instructs (e.g., "[200.205] The mandatory pre-issuance review by political appointees conflicts with..."). This ensures your comment is cataloged correctly in the docket.
6. Modular draft arguments you can adapt
6. Modular draft arguments you can adapt
Each section below addresses a specific provision. Pick the ones that apply to your situation. Replace bracketed placeholders with your own specifics. Rewrite in your own voice. The goal is independent voices, not identical submissions.
On political appointee pre-issuance review (Section 200.205)
On political appointee pre-issuance review (Section 200.205)
[200.205] The requirement that senior political appointees conduct pre-issuance review of every discretionary grant, with an explicit prohibition on deferring to peer reviewers, conflicts with the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 289a), which establishes peer review by qualified experts as the basis for NIH funding decisions. The United States built the world's preeminent biomedical research enterprise on merit-based peer review precisely because non-expert political override produces funding decisions optimized for political palatability rather than scientific impact. As a PI holding [number] active NIH grants in [your field], the effect of this provision is to make every funded project, including ongoing multi-year research, contingent on political alignment rather than scientific merit.
On peer review reduced to advisory status (Section 200.205(d))
On peer review reduced to advisory status (Section 200.205(d))
[200.205(d)] Reducing peer review to explicitly advisory status, with political appointees forbidden from deferring to or routinely ratifying expert recommendations, reverses the foundational principle that has governed federal science funding since 1945. Before 2025, there were only two political appointees at NIH, and even these, the NIH and National Cancer Institute directors, were accomplished scientists. The proposed rule gives nonexpert appointees veto authority over the judgment of hundreds of study sections comprising thousands of domain experts. My field, [your field], requires [specific technical expertise] to evaluate proposals competently. No political appointee possesses this expertise. The provision will produce funding decisions that are scientifically arbitrary and legally vulnerable.
On publication costs (Section 200.461)
On publication costs (Section 200.461)
[200.461] Making publication costs presumptively unallowable directly conflicts with the August 2022 OSTP memorandum requiring that federally funded research be made publicly available at no cost to the reader. Article processing charges at journals in my field average [$X] per paper. My laboratory publishes approximately [Y] peer-reviewed papers per year. Under this provision, I would need to find [$Z] annually from non-federal sources to comply with the public access mandate while being prohibited from using federal funds to do so. The net effect is suppression of the scientific record. Peer-reviewed publication is the mechanism by which science is validated, challenged, and built upon. Making it financially prohibitive for federally funded researchers to publish their findings serves no transparency objective.
On conference pre-approval (Section 200.432)
On conference pre-approval (Section 200.432)
[200.432] Conference attendance is where scientists present results, receive peer critique, discover new approaches, and build collaborations. In the past [time period], I presented federally funded research at [name conferences]. Under this provision, each of those presentations would have required express agency pre-approval written into my award terms at the time of funding. Conferences not anticipated when the award was issued cannot easily be added. Scientific opportunities, including invited talks, workshop participation, and emerging collaborations, cannot be predicted at the time of award. This provision gives political appointees gatekeeper authority over which scientific communities federally funded researchers can participate in.
On journal subscriptions (Section 200.454)
On journal subscriptions (Section 200.454)
[200.454] Making journal subscriptions categorically unallowable as direct costs eliminates a standard mechanism by which investigators access the scientific literature foundational to their work. My research requires regular access to [name specific journals or fields]. At institutions with constrained library budgets, individual investigator subscriptions funded through grants fill the gap. This provision restricts access to the very literature that federally funded scientists are expected to build upon, while simultaneously making it harder to publish in that literature (Section 200.461).
On international collaboration (Section 200.220)
On international collaboration (Section 200.220)
[200.220] My research involves active collaboration with [institution/country] on [scientific topic]. This collaboration is essential because [specific scientific rationale, e.g., access to patient populations, unique model systems, specialized equipment, complementary expertise]. The blanket prohibition on using federal funds, including indirect costs, for collaboration with covered foreign countries would terminate this collaboration and [specific scientific consequence]. While legitimate national security concerns exist regarding certain foreign entities, this provision is sweeping enough to sever partnerships that have been foundational to U.S. leadership in [your field].
On grant termination without cause (Section 200.340)
On grant termination without cause (Section 200.340)
[200.340] The authority to terminate active grants mid-award without a finding of misconduct or noncompliance creates an environment in which no PI can responsibly hire trainees, commit to longitudinal studies, or invest in infrastructure. I currently employ [number] trainees and staff on my active grants. Each of them made career decisions based on the reasonable expectation that funded awards would run their course. Between 2012 and January 2025, NIH terminated fewer than six grants midstream in thirteen years. Since February 2025, HHS has terminated over 1,392 NIH grants totaling $539 million in unliquidated obligations (CRS, April 2026). The proposed rule would convert this unprecedented pattern into permanent regulatory authority.
On the training pipeline (applicable to multiple sections)
On the training pipeline (applicable to multiple sections)
The combined effect of Sections 200.205, 200.340, 200.432, 200.454, and 200.461 falls disproportionately on trainees and early-career investigators. Graduate students and postdocs cannot attend conferences without pre-approval, cannot publish without non-federal funds, cannot access journals, and cannot trust that the grants supporting their positions will continue. In my laboratory, [specific example: students advised to seek non-academic positions, recruitment difficulty, cohort reduction]. The 10-to-15-year training cycle from graduate admission to independent investigator means that damage to the pipeline now produces generational, not episodic, losses.
7. What else you can do (parallel actions)
7. What else you can do (parallel actions)
Submitting a comment is the single highest-leverage action available right now because it creates the legal record. The following actions are complementary and should be pursued in parallel.
Contact your House representative and both senators. Ask specifically for peer review protections and grant stability language in FY2027 LHHS appropriations. Markup timelines overlap with this comment period. Congress inserted protective riders in the FY2026 Consolidated Appropriations Act (Section 224, blocking the indirect cost cap; Section 240, capping multi-year obligations at FY2025 levels). The same mechanism can protect peer review. The Senate LHHS Subcommittee is chaired by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) and the Ranking Member is Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI). Arguments framed around medical progress, state economic impact, national security, and administrative decisions that undermine congressional intent are the arguments that move this specific committee.
Contact your state attorney general. State AGs have standing to challenge the final rule under the APA and led the successful litigation against the indirect cost cap. The Massachusetts AG led that challenge. AGs from states with major research universities (Massachusetts, California, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, North Carolina, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Texas) have direct standing because the rule threatens the economic base of their public university systems and academic medical centers. Contacting your AG's office now, before the comment period closes, signals demand for action.
Coordinate with your scientific society. Institutional comments from SfN, FASEB, BMES, AIMBE, AAU, APLU, AAMC, and COGR carry weight in the administrative record. Contact your society's government affairs office and ask whether they are preparing a comment. If they are, your individual comment still matters because it provides specific evidence of harm that institutional letters cannot.
Forward this guide to colleagues, postdocs, and graduate students. The people most affected by these provisions, early-career scientists who lose conference funding, publication funding, journal access, and job stability first, are the least represented in policy feedback. Every independent voice in the record strengthens the legal and political case.
8. What to avoid
8. What to avoid
Do not submit identical comments. Form letters and copy-paste submissions are cataloged as a single comment. Rewrite in your own voice, even if you use the modular arguments above as a starting point.
Do not use DEI-flagged vocabulary. Terms such as "diversity," "equity," "inclusion," "underrepresented," "disparities" (in a workforce context), and "structural racism" are liabilities in any document entering the federal record under this administration. Translate equity arguments into capacity, stewardship, workforce sustainability, and merit-based language. The functional outcomes are identical. The risk profile is not.
Do not make the comment purely emotional or political. Courts give weight to comments that identify statutory conflicts, provide concrete evidence of harm, and propose alternatives. "This rule is terrible" is not a substantive comment. "Section 200.205 conflicts with 42 U.S.C. 289a because..." is.
Do not include personally identifiable information you do not want public. Comments and attachments are posted publicly on regulations.gov. Name, institution, and professional details strengthen your comment. Social Security numbers, home addresses, and personal health information should not be included.
Do not wait until July 13. The comment period may feel long. It is not. Coordinating institutional responses, drafting substantive comments, and building the record takes weeks. Start now.
9. Legal remedies that exist
9. Legal remedies that exist
APA litigation. Because this is a proposed regulation under notice-and-comment rulemaking, the final rule is subject to judicial review under APA Section 706(2)(A). The First Circuit's January 2026 ruling striking down the indirect cost cap established precedent that OMB cannot override agency-specific statutory mandates through administrative action. If the final rule contradicts the PHS Act's peer review requirements, contradicts congressional intent in appropriations language, or is internally inconsistent with its stated objectives, courts can vacate it. The administrative record, built from public comments, is central to that challenge.
Congressional appropriations riders. The FY2026 Consolidated Appropriations Act included Section 224 (blocking indirect cost cap changes) and Section 240 (capping multi-year forward funding). Congress can insert analogous protections for peer review, publication funding, and conference attendance into FY2027 appropriations. This is why contacting your representatives matters now, while markup timelines overlap with the comment period.
State attorney general action. State AGs can file suit challenging the final rule and can submit formal comments during the comment period as governmental entities. Both tracks strengthen the legal challenge.
10. Submission checklist
10. Submission checklist
Comment submitted at https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/OMB-2026-0034-0001
Each point begins with the relevant section number in brackets (e.g., [200.205])
At least one specific statutory conflict identified (42 U.S.C. 289a, OSTP 2022 memo, or other)
At least one concrete example of harm from your own laboratory or institution
Harm to Taxpayers and citizens (including giving our technology lead to competition (e.g. China))
5,000-character limit for the text box (attach a PDF or Word document for longer comments)
Attachments under 10 MB each, maximum 20 files
No personally identifiable information you do not want public
Submitted as Individual (recommended) or Organization
Deadline: July 13, 2026
Register officials will use ChatGPT to summarize, so you can play with AI to refine your comments maximize how
your comments will be combined with thousands of others.
10.5 Model comment submission
10.5 Model comment submission
A complete model comment is available for download alongside this guide. It demonstrates how to structure a legally substantive APA comment that references specific regulatory sections, identifies statutory conflicts, provides concrete evidence of harm from a working laboratory, addresses the national security implications of the proposed provisions, and requests specific action from OMB. The model comment includes a 5,000-character text box version (for pasting directly into the regulations.gov form) and a 5-page PDF attachment expanding the arguments with a China competition analysis, void-for-vagueness challenge to the "Gold Standard Science" standard, and documentation of the preamble's reliance on partisan rather than independent sources. Use it as a structural template, not as text to copy. Independent voices in independent language are what build the administrative record.
11. A note to graduate students, postdocs, and early-career investigators
11. A note to graduate students, postdocs, and early-career investigators
Your voice matters here, perhaps more than anyone's. You are the people most affected by the decisions this rule will encode, and you are the least represented in policy feedback. Do not assume your perspective is too limited or your career too early to count. The comment form accepts anonymous submissions. You do not need to be a PI or have funding to comment.
The provisions hitting you hardest are specific and personal. Section 200.432 means you cannot attend a conference on your grant without express pre-approval. Section 200.461 means you cannot publish your work using grant funds. Section 200.454 means you cannot subscribe to the journals you need to read. Section 200.340 means the grant funding your position can be terminated at any time without cause. Say so in your comment. Name the conference you attended last year. Name the paper you published. Name the journal you need.
Public comment has changed NIH policy before. The BRAIN Initiative K99/R00 career transition awards exist in part because trainees and early-career scientists made the case that the pipeline was failing them. When NIH proposed the Grant Support Index in 2017 to redistribute funding, it was abandoned within a month after well-funded senior scientists mobilized while trainees stayed silent. The lesson is straightforward: the voices that show up in the record shape policy. Silence will be inferred as support.
12. Useful sources
12. Useful sources
Elizabeth Ginexi, provision-by-provision analysis of OMB-2026-0034: https://elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of-key-changes-in-ombs-proposed
Mark Histed, "American Biomedical Science in 2026" (Don Moynihan Substack, January 2026): https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/american-biomedical-science-in-2026
Mark Histed, "The Slow Dismantling of American Science" (Union of Concerned Scientists, April 2026): https://blog.ucs.org/science-blogger/the-slow-dismantling-of-american-science-and-what-we-can-do-about-it/
Jeremy Berg, Bluesky feed (NIH funding data and policy analysis, 14,000+ followers): https://bsky.app/profile/jeremymberg.bsky.social
Jeremy Berg, NIH Dashboard (grant obligation tracking): https://jeremymberg.github.io/jeremyberg.github.io/index.html
Full proposed rule (Federal Register): https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/05/29/2026-10817/regulation-for-federal-financial-assistance
Comment submission portal: https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/OMB-2026-0034-0001
Wiley Rein LLP legal analysis: https://www.wiley.law/alert-OMB-Proposes-Sweeping-Overhaul-of-Federal-Assistance-Regulations
Benton Institute analysis (including note on preamble sourcing from Heritage Foundation/Manhattan Institute): https://www.benton.org/blog/omb-proposes-changes-federal-grant-administration
Science/AAAS coverage: https://www.science.org/content/article/white-house-seeks-tighten-political-oversight-grantmaking
Scientific American coverage: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/white-house-proposes-new-rules-giving-political-appointees-final-say-on-research-grants/
Inside Higher Ed coverage: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/science-research-policy/2026/05/29/omb-proposes-rules-establishing-political
KFF Health News (Norton and Histed quotes, political appointee analysis): https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/nih-grants-trump-political-appointees-agenda-alignment-peer-review/
GAO decision B-337203 (Impoundment Control Act finding): https://www.gao.gov/products/b-337203
Congressional Research Service, NIH Grants Policy Under the Second Trump Administration (IF13131): https://crsreports.congress.gov
United for Medical Research, 2026 Annual Economic Impact Report (state-specific data): https://unitedformedicalresearch.org/annual-economic-report/
UMR state toolkits: https://unitedformedicalresearch.org/nih-in-your-state/
Senate LHHS FY27 Outside Witness Testimony guide (companion document): https://bioniclab.org/news/senate-appropriations-open-comments
NIH Strategic Plan RFI guide (companion document, NOT-OD-26-047): https://bioniclab.org/news/nih-rfi
Forward this guide to colleagues through LinkedIn, your lab website, email, or Signal. Volume of independent voices by July 13 is the goal. Please forward to every colleague, postdoc, and graduate student in your department. They are the ones who lose conference funding, publication funding, and journal access first.
Takashi D. Y. Kozai, Ph.D. Ernest E. Roth Professor of Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh Director, B.I.O.N.I.C. Lab
This is Illegal. The legal attack surface is unusually broad for a single rulemaking.
Statutory conflicts (the strongest claims). Section 200.205 directly contradicts 42 U.S.C. 289a, which mandates peer review by qualified experts as the basis for NIH funding decisions. The rule explicitly forbids appointees from deferring to those experts. Section 200.461 conflicts with the 2022 OSTP public access memorandum, which requires federally funded research to be freely available, while simultaneously making publication costs unallowable. These are not ambiguous tensions. They are direct contradictions between a proposed regulation and existing statutory and executive mandates.
Arbitrary and capricious (APA §706(2)(A)). The rule claims three objectives: transparency, regulatory clarity, and reduced burden. Every major provision does the opposite. Eliminating binding peer review reduces transparency. Adding conference pre-approval, E-Verify mandates, political alignment documentation, and publication cost workarounds increases burden. Defining compliance around an undefined "Gold Standard Science" reduces clarity. The First Circuit used exactly this internal-contradiction logic to strike down the indirect cost cap in January 2026. The preamble compounds the problem by citing Heritage Foundation reports and Manhattan Institute op-eds as its evidentiary basis rather than independent administrative or scientific assessments. That sourcing choice alone weakens the agency's claim of reasoned decision-making.
Void for vagueness. "Gold Standard Science" is required as a compliance benchmark but never operationally defined. "Anti-American values" is a disqualifying criterion with no measurable content. "National interest" exemptions from public posting requirements give the agency head unconstrained discretion. Each of these fails the basic due process requirement that regulated parties receive adequate notice of what conduct is expected.
Non-delegation and structural concerns. The rule centralizes grant authority in political appointees while stripping civil service protections (via Schedule F) from the career staff who historically exercised that authority. The combination creates a system where the people making decisions have no domain expertise and the people with domain expertise have no job protection. OMB is also claiming direct binding regulatory authority over all agencies through a 2 CFR restructure, which raises questions about whether OMB has the statutory authority to override agency-specific enabling statutes (the PHS Act, the NSF Act, the DOE Organization Act) through a uniform grants regulation.
First Amendment concerns. Section 200.450 prohibits "issue advocacy" on federal funds. Section 200.421 restricts public communications. Combined with the content-based criteria in Section 200.205 (blocking awards touching on "the sex binary," immigration, or "anti-American values"), these provisions function as viewpoint-based restrictions on federally funded speech. Viewpoint discrimination triggers strict scrutiny, the highest bar in First Amendment law.
Impoundment Control Act (ongoing). GAO already found NIH in violation (B-337203, August 2025). The rule's terminate-at-will provision (§200.340) and the conference/publication restrictions create new mechanisms for effectively impounding appropriated funds without formally withholding them. Congress appropriates money for research. If the rule makes it functionally impossible to spend that money on research activities (publishing, conferences, journals, international collaboration), the effect is impoundment by regulation rather than by executive withholding.
The aggregate problem. Any single provision might survive judicial review in isolation. The cumulative architecture is what makes the rule vulnerable. It is not a reform of grants management. It is a single regulatory instrument that simultaneously claims transparency while eliminating it, claims burden reduction while increasing it, overrides multiple statutory mandates, imposes viewpoint-based content restrictions, vests unreviewable discretion in political appointees, and relies on partisan advocacy documents as its evidentiary foundation. The breadth is what makes it legally fragile, because a court reviewing the rule holistically can see the pattern that each individual provision obscures.
The comment period is the place to build the record on every one of these threads. Each substantive comment that identifies a specific statutory conflict or internal contradiction is a brick in the litigation wall.
Dear Colleague
OMB-2026-0034: The Permanent Architecture. 41 Days to Respond.
OMB-2026-0034: The Permanent Architecture. 41 Days to Respond.
June 1, 2026
Colleagues,
TL;DR: On Friday, OMB published a 412-page proposed regulation that codifies political appointee control over every federal science grant, government-wide, effective October 1. Peer review becomes advisory. Publication costs banned. Conferences require pre-approval. Active grants terminable without cause. The comment period closes July 13. Your comment is not symbolic. It is the legal record courts will use to block the final rule. Silence in the record is evidence of acceptance.
Comment portal: https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/OMB-2026-0034-0001 Guide for writing an effective comment: https://www.bioniclab.org/news/OMB
2025 was the test run. This is the deployment.
2025 was the test run. This is the deployment.
Every action the administration took against NIH in 2025, the grant terminations, payline elimination, NOFO collapse, keyword screening, forward funding squeeze, workforce reductions, was implemented through memos, executive orders, and discretion. Each was individually reversible and litigable. Each was a test of whether anyone would push back hard enough to stop the next step.
The courts pushed back in some cases. The First Circuit struck down the indirect cost cap. Congress inserted protective riders in FY2026 appropriations. The system held, partially.
The administration learned from those losses. OMB-2026-0034 takes every ad hoc policy that worked and codifies it into binding regulatory text under 2 CFR, applicable to NIH, NSF, DOE, NASA, DOD, and ARPA-H simultaneously. A finalized regulation can only be undone through a new rulemaking, congressional action, or litigation. Executive orders can be reversed by the next president. This cannot, not easily, not quickly. And the rule goes further than anything attempted in 2025: it restructures who has the authority to make funding decisions in American science, permanently, by regulation, across every agency.
Do not wait for the courts.
Do not wait for the courts.
The litigation will come. But the indirect cost cap was proposed in late 2024, struck down in January 2026. During that 14-month interval, the policy was operational. Universities absorbed the damage. Labs lost staff. Training programs contracted. Courts can vacate a regulation. They cannot restore grants never funded, papers never published, students never admitted, or scientists who left the country.
The comment period exists to prevent the rule from reaching that stage. Under the APA, OMB must respond to every substantive comment before finalizing. If the record shows the rule contradicts its own objectives, conflicts with statutes, or lacks rational basis, that record becomes the foundation for an injunction before October 1. Your comment is not a petition. It is a legal exhibit.
What it does
What it does
Full analysis by Elizabeth Ginexi (former NIH program officer): https://elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of-key-changes-in-ombs-proposed
The provisions that matter most:
Section 200.205: Political appointees conduct pre-issuance review of every grant, explicitly forbidden from deferring to peer reviewers. Compliance with undefined "Gold Standard Science" required.
Section 200.340: Active grants terminable at any time without cause, misconduct finding, or appeals process.
Section 200.461: Publication costs presumptively unallowable, directly conflicting with the 2022 OSTP public access mandate.
Section 200.432: Conference attendance requires express agency pre-approval written into award terms.
Section 200.454: Journal subscriptions categorically unallowable. Professional memberships require prior approval.
Section 200.220: International collaboration broadly prohibited, including allocable indirect costs.
They published it on a Friday afternoon, the slot reserved for announcements the administration does not want covered. The comment window closes July 13, mid-summer, after most faculty have left campus.
Why silence is dangerous
Why silence is dangerous
Under the APA, a sparse comment docket is evidence of tacit acceptance. An agency can cite low participation to justify finalizing without substantive revision. Every PI, trainee (or unemployed), citizen, taxpayer (you do not need to be in the USA or a citizen) who stays silent makes the legal challenge harder for the PIs who do not.
As one NIH program officer put it: "The comments will be ignored by the administration. But they will not be ignored in the historical record. Silence will be inferred as support."
What to do now
What to do now
Submit a comment at regulations.gov (Docket OMB-2026-0034). Name one provision, one statutory conflict, one harm to your lab. That is a substantive comment OMB must address. Guide with modular arguments: https://www.bioniclab.org/news/OMB
Contact your House rep and both senators. Ask for peer review protections in FY2027 LHHS appropriations. Markup timelines overlap with this comment period.
Contact your state attorney general. State AGs have standing to challenge the final rule and led the successful indirect cost cap litigation.
Forward this letter to every colleague, postdoc, and graduate student in your department. The people losing conference funding, publication funding, and journal access first are the least represented in the record.
The post-WWII system in which the government funds science but does not direct it is not being reformed. It is being replaced, by regulation, on a 41-day clock, in a document published at the moment designed for no one to notice.
Please do not be silent.
TK
Full proposed rule: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/05/29/2026-10817/regulation-for-federal-financial-assistance
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