The so-called “expert” class took another blow Thursday after President Donald Trump signed an executive order largely stripping them of the power to use taxpayer funding on left-wing pet projects.
The order, called “Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking,” requires that a political appointee of the president, not a career bureaucrat, would ultimately be in charge of ushering through federal grant proposals. That makes taxpayer dollars being used to fund projects accountable to the political leadership chosen by the American people, by way of electing the president.
Self-appointed “experts” have for decades been in complete control of approving or disapproving grant funding, which has left the country with some of the most harmful ideologies and products in history, as the litany of examples cited by the order show.
“Federal grants have funded drag shows in Ecuador, trained doctoral candidates in critical race theory, and developed transgender-sexual-education programs. In 2024, one study claimed that more than one-quarter of new National Science Foundation (NSF) grants went to diversity, equity, and inclusion and other far-left initiatives,” the order states. “These NSF grants included those to educators that promoted Marxism, class warfare propaganda, and other anti-American ideologies in the classroom, masked as rigorous and thoughtful investigation.”
“The harm imposed by problematic Federal grants does not stop at propagating absurd ideologies. An unsafe lab in Wuhan, China — likely the source of the COVID-19 pandemic — engaged in gain-of-function research funded by the National Institutes of Health,” it continues. “The NSF gave millions to develop AI-powered social media censorship tools — a direct assault on free speech. Taxpayer-funded grants have also gone to non-governmental organizations that provided free services to illegal immigrants, worsening the border crisis and compromising our safety, and to organizations that actively worked against American interests abroad.”
The shift in oversight will ensure that federal tax dollars are “consistent with agency priorities and the national interest,” the order states. But that could largely mean that the permanent deep state will lose one of its most effective tools for controlling politics: Directing how research and grant funding is allocated as well as picking and choosing their favorite projects.
Political appointees in charge of grant funding will be able to call on subject matter experts of their choosing, at their own discretion. In the case of scientific research grants, a subject matter expert will be required to be a part of the review process.
Projects are not allowed to be funded if they “fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate … racial preferences or other forms of racial discrimination by the grant recipient, including activities where race or intentional proxies for race will be used as a selection criterion for employment or program participation; denial by the grant recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic; illegal immigration; or any other initiatives that compromise public safety or promote anti-American values.”
Another way it sidelines “experts” is by streamlining the actual application process itself, which in the past had required legal and technical “expertise,” which made the process prohibitive to those who may have a worthy project but not the money to retain lawyers to parse through the application.
In other words, it was inside baseball, and as the order points out, “Writing effective grant applications is notoriously complex, and grant applicants that can afford legal and technical experts are more likely to receive funds — which can then further support these non-mission functions.”
The order further states that “grants should be given to a broad range of recipients rather than to a select group of repeat players.”
So as to not duplicate research or projects, the order requires interagency coordination to ensure that projects funded by one agency are not already being funded by another. The heads of the agencies, like a department secretary, will also designate a political appointee to monitor the projects on an annual basis to keep them on track with regard to time and subject matter, as well as ensuring they are making requisite progress.
According to the order, the political appointees and those they choose to be part of the process would be limited in their abilities to delegate their oversight, as the order specifies, “Senior appointees and their designees shall not ministerially ratify or routinely defer to the recommendations of others in reviewing funding opportunity announcements or discretionary awards, but shall instead use their independent judgment.”
In order for a project to be approved for grant funding, the project must demonstrate that it advances the president’s agenda, making the grantmaking process more accountable to the will of the people who elected the president.
The heads of agencies have 30 days to review their grant procedures and submit a report to Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, ensuring that grants will now have termination clauses to allow the government to stop funding if the “award no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities.”
Reports will also detail how many active grants have termination clauses, and if they do not, take steps “to the extent permitted by law” revise them so that they do.