August 2025

On August 7, President Trump issued an executive order, “Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking,” that significantly alters the review and administration of federal grants, including research funding.

“This executive order represents an unprecedented attack on scientific peer review and the role of subject-matter experts who have knowledge of the timely issues of national interest that are ripe for research,” said AERA Executive Director Tabbye M. Chavous. “Research supported by the federal government has long served the national interest, including work done by education scholars that informs evidence-based practice to improve teaching and enhance learning across the lifespan.”

The order directs federal agencies to designate a senior appointee to review announcements of new grant funding opportunities and existing grants to ensure that they align with agency priorities and the national interest. In addition, the review process would include subject-matter experts as determined by an agency head or designee, with scientific research grants involving at least one subject-matter expert in the field of application. The process would also involve interagency coordination to ensure that grants are not duplicated and pre-issuance review of grants by a senior appointee for consistency with law, agency priorities, and the national interest.

As part of the review criteria, the executive order directs agencies to include how they would address the president’s priorities. In addition, grant funds would be prohibited related to “racial preferences or other forms of racial discrimination,” “denial by the grant recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic,” “illegal immigration,” and promotion of “anti-American values.”

The executive order also calls for grants to be prioritized for those with the lowest indirect cost rates and that they “should be given to a broad range of recipients rather than to a select group of repeat players.” A related fact sheet was more specific in stating that grants should not repeatedly go to the same universities and nonprofits. Specifically for research grants, the executive order urges commitment to and promotion of “Gold Standard Science.”

In addition, the order directs agencies to review within 30 days the terms and conditions for grants and to provide to the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget the approximate number of active discretionary awards at the agency, as well as the approximate percentage of funding obligated under those awards that contains termination provisions allowing for termination. Those provisions would include “if an award no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities” or “if the agency ‘determines that the remaining portion of the Federal award will not accomplish the purposes for which the Federal award was made.’”

The first provision related to agency priorities was used as the justification for the termination of grants that had been awarded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health earlier this year.

The executive order would also prohibit the drawdown of research grant funds without agency approval, along with requiring grantees to justify any request for drawdowns.