Proposed new US funding rules: We can cancel any grant at any time

Grants meet the culture war

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.)

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.

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 inquiry, public safety, and trust in government,” the OMB asserts, based on no evidence whatsoever.

There’s also a political litmus test for funding that harkens back to the McCarthy era, when those with “un-American” ideas were ostracized. “OMB proposes a new provision that agencies may consider an applicant’s affiliations with organizations engaged in activities that violate Federal law, undermine public safety or national security, or advocate for the overthrow of the United States Government,” the document notes.