Proposed new US funding rules: We can cancel any grant at any time
Proposed new US funding rules: We can cancel any grant at any time
美国拟议的新拨款规则：我们随时可以取消任何资助
Last August, the Trump administration issued an executive order intended to fundamentally alter how grant funding is handled by the US government. Under the system that had made the US a scientific superpower, peer reviewers rated the scientific quality and feasibility of grant applications, and subject-matter experts within the funding agencies used these ratings to determine which grants got funded.
去年八月，特朗普政府发布了一项行政命令，旨在从根本上改变美国政府处理拨款资助的方式。在使美国成为科学超级大国的原有体系下，同行评审员会对拨款申请的科学质量和可行性进行评估，资助机构内部的学科专家则根据这些评分来决定哪些项目获得资助。
Under the proposed rules, political appointees would have the final say, and they were specifically instructed not to “routinely defer” to peer reviewers. In the interim, the administration has lost many court cases because it turns out that issuing executive orders doesn’t circumvent legal requirements, and the orders can be vacated if they lack strong justification. To avoid that same fate, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has decided to merge the executive order with other administration priorities and send it through the formal federal rulemaking process.
根据拟议的规则，政治任命官员将拥有最终决定权，并被明确指示不要“惯性地听从”同行评审员的意见。在此期间，政府在多起诉讼中败诉，因为事实证明，发布行政命令并不能规避法律要求，如果缺乏强有力的理由，这些命令可能会被撤销。为了避免重蹈覆辙，管理和预算办公室（OMB）决定将该行政命令与其他政府优先事项合并，并通过正式的联邦规则制定程序进行推进。
The result is a horror show for US science research. Not only is peer review made a secondary consideration, but the new rules would allow any federal agency to cancel any grant at any time based on the vague assertion that it isn’t in the “national interest.” The document would also ban any grants on a number of culture war topics, limit international collaborations, and block spending on things like publishing papers and attending conferences. It is, in short, a recipe for how the government can finish the job of crippling American science.
其结果对美国科学研究而言是一场噩梦。新规则不仅将同行评审降为次要考量，还允许任何联邦机构以“不符合国家利益”这一模糊理由，随时取消任何拨款。该文件还将禁止资助一系列涉及文化战争议题的项目，限制国际合作，并阻止在发表论文和参加会议等方面的支出。简而言之，这是政府彻底摧毁美国科学事业的“处方”。
Putting the OMB in charge
让管理和预算办公室（OMB）掌权
Previously, the rules governing grantmaking were handled on an agency-by-agency basis. The OMB issued overall guidance, but the Department of Energy wasn’t expected to follow the exact same procedures that were developed for the National Institutes of Health, to give two examples. The new document is meant to change that situation, turning what had been guidance into rules. By publishing them, the OMB is starting the formal rulemaking process, which will then proceed through public feedback and a final rule published in the Federal Register.
此前，管理拨款的规则由各机构自行处理。OMB 虽然发布了总体指导方针，但能源部并不需要遵循为国立卫生研究院（NIH）制定的完全相同的程序。这份新文件旨在改变这一现状，将原本的指导方针转化为强制规则。通过发布这些文件，OMB 启动了正式的规则制定程序，随后将经过公众反馈，并在《联邦公报》上发布最终规则。
The document itself is an odd grab-bag of micromanaging grant processes, assertion of presidential power, and airing of cultural grievances. In many spots, it’s not even internally consistent—it insists, for example, that “Federal financial assistance must not discriminate on the basis of the viewpoint,” and then turns around and complains that grants ” were often used… to promote a ‘woke’ policy agenda that did not reflect the values of the vast majority of the American public.”
该文件本身是一个奇怪的混合体，既有对拨款流程的微观管理，又有对总统权力的宣示，还夹杂着对文化不满的宣泄。在许多地方，它甚至在内部逻辑上都不一致——例如，它坚持认为“联邦财政援助不得基于观点进行歧视”，转头却又抱怨拨款“经常被用于……推广不反映绝大多数美国公众价值观的‘觉醒’（woke）政策议程”。
Its lack of coherence, however, will not prevent it from causing staggering damage to the US scientific system. For starters, it would formalize the deprecation of peer review as a factor in deciding which grants to fund. “Peer review remains advisory and does not replace agency discretion,” the document states. That was always technically true, as agencies like the NIH and National Science Foundation reserved the option of funding some lower-scoring grants if experts within those agencies felt they had merit that the reviewers had overlooked. But those were considered exceptions and were relatively rare.
然而，这种逻辑上的不连贯并不能阻止它对美国科学体系造成惊人的破坏。首先，它将正式贬低同行评审在决定资助项目时的作用。“同行评审仅供参考，不能取代机构的自由裁量权，”文件中写道。从技术上讲，这一点一直都是事实，因为像 NIH 和国家科学基金会（NSF）这样的机构确实保留了资助一些低分项目的选择权，前提是机构内部专家认为这些项目具有评审员未发现的价值。但这些情况被视为例外，且相对罕见。
Nearly everything about that will be changing if the OMB has its way. The people making those sorts of decisions will no longer be expert staff, but political appointees. Scientific merit is meant to matter less than vague standards like “in the national interest.” And the document states blatantly that any grant program would need to be “aligned with administration policies and priorities.”
如果 OMB 的计划得以实施，这一切都将发生改变。做出这些决定的人将不再是专家人员，而是政治任命官员。科学价值的重要性将低于“符合国家利益”等模糊标准。该文件还公然声称，任何资助计划都需要“与政府的政策和优先事项保持一致”。
The administration has been on a losing streak in court cases involving its widespread cancellation of grants in 2025, in part because the agencies doing the terminating didn’t follow any formal procedure. The new rules would formally declare that agencies don’t need a reason. All grant approvals would include language warning the recipient that they could be canceled at any time if the agency providing the funding decides that the grant is no longer in the national interest.
政府在 2025 年大规模取消拨款的诉讼中屡屡败诉，部分原因是执行终止的机构没有遵循任何正式程序。新规则将正式宣布机构无需提供理由。所有拨款批准书都将包含警告条款，告知受赠方：如果资助机构认为该项目不再符合国家利益，拨款随时可能被取消。
Grants meet the culture war
拨款遭遇文化战争
The document makes clear what sorts of things might be considered administration priorities and national interest—and they’re largely a war on woke. For example, the Trump administration canceled PEPFAR, a program meant to limit the spread of HIV in Africa; it’s a step that is estimated to lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths. But to the OMB, that’s a good thing, because the alternative was woke: “Far-left activists hijacked the critical work done by the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which was established to respond to the AIDS crisis in Africa. Due to wasteful spending, PEPFAR became a left-wing foreign aid entitlement that attempted to promote abortion and gender ideology.” (Its cited source for that is an editorial from the Heritage Foundation, a far-right-wing think tank.)
该文件明确了哪些事项可能被视为政府的优先事项和国家利益——它们很大程度上是针对“觉醒文化”的战争。例如，特朗普政府取消了旨在限制非洲艾滋病毒传播的 PEPFAR 项目；据估计，这一举措将导致数十万人死亡。但对 OMB 而言，这是一件好事，因为另一种选择是“觉醒”：“极左翼活动人士劫持了美国总统艾滋病紧急救援计划（PEPFAR）的关键工作，该计划旨在应对非洲的艾滋病危机。由于浪费性支出，PEPFAR 变成了一种试图推广堕胎和性别意识形态的左翼对外援助福利。”（其引用的来源是极右翼智库传统基金会的一篇社论。）
While it demands “viewpoint neutral” behavior from everyone receiving money, it has no issues with engaging in viewpoint discrimination itself. For example, it outright bans any funding for “theories of disparate-impact liability,” the idea that apparently race-neutral rules might have impacts that differ based on the race of the people involved. Also banned: any attempts to compensate for the historic discrimination that has kept women and minorities from having equal opportunities in society. That’s considered DEI, and thus forbidden.
虽然它要求所有接受资金的人保持“观点中立”，但它自己进行观点歧视却毫无顾忌。例如，它彻底禁止资助任何关于“差异影响责任理论”的研究，即认为表面上种族中立的规则可能会根据相关人员的种族产生不同影响的观点。同样被禁止的还有：任何试图补偿历史性歧视的尝试，这些歧视曾使妇女和少数群体无法在社会中获得平等机会。这被视为 DEI（多元、公平与包容），因此被禁止。
Also out: funding for what it terms “gender ideology,” which it defines as an effort to “deny the biological reality of sex or the sex binary in humans.” Apparently, studying human chromosomal disorders, which can result in unusual combinations of X and Y chromosomes, is no longer welcome in the US. “Ending government-sponsored promotion of divisive gender ideology is critical to scientific…
同样被排除的还有：对所谓“性别意识形态”的资助，它将其定义为“否认人类性别或性别二元论的生物学现实”的努力。显然，研究可能导致 X 和 Y 染色体异常组合的人类染色体疾病，在美国已不再受欢迎。“结束政府资助的、具有分裂性的性别意识形态推广，对于科学而言至关重要……”