1. United States
2. Va.
3. Letter

Reject the White House's proposed regulations that would hand political appointees final approval authority over federal research grants. This 412-page proposal would strip scientific peer review of any binding power at agencies like NIH and NSF, reducing it to merely "advisory" — meaning decades of rigorous, apolitical expert evaluation gets overridden by political loyalty tests tied to race and gender priorities. The damage would be severe and lasting. As Colette Delawalla of Stand Up for Science put it, this proposal "replaces expertise with political appointees, globally decouples the U.S. and completely guts our scientific ecosystem." The rules also give political appointees unchecked termination authority over grants — a direct workaround to court rulings that already found the administration's earlier mass grant cancellations illegal. The public comment window is just 45 days, an unusually short period for changes this sweeping. American scientific leadership was built on the principle that research funding follows evidence, not ideology. Please use every tool available to block these regulations from taking effect.