Comments on Grant Rule Flood OMB; Defend Public Health Readies Next Steps

Effort to Stop Politicization of All Federal Funding Has Just Begun

Per the tally posted online Monday night, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has been flooded with nearly half a million comments, including many from members of Defend Public Health, over its proposed rule that would essentially politicize all federal grants. DPH is both celebrating the massive effort to create a public record of opposition and preparing for the next steps in the campaign to stop the rule.

“Boosted by our over a dozen comment parties and multiple action alerts, Defend Public Health members nationwide, from North Carolina to Hawaii, flooded OMB with detailed documentation of the harm this rule would cause” said DPH member Melinda Rostal, DVM, MPH, PhD. “This is an important milestone as we continue to pressure Congress to act and consider possibilities for litigation.

“Many groups that generated comments focused specifically on the impact on science, and that’s critical, but we wanted to emphasize that these regulations affect all federal funding,” Rostal continued. “This rule could turn everything from disaster recovery and healthcare funding to highway construction into a partisan football.”

Comments submitted by DPH members covered a lot of ground, from the rule’s impact on science to its broader implications for local communities, including non-science funding, and the damage inflicted by sudden, arbitrary funding cut-offs that the rule would allow.

One DPH member told the heartbreaking story of how researchers studying a treatment for the rare form of pancreatic cancer that killed her father-in-law had to leave the institution conducting the study after federal funding was arbitrarily cut last year.

DPH Coordinating Committee member Julie Scofield of Virginia drew on her experience as a legislative staffer and nonprofit executive director to note that the proposed rule would essentially override congressional authority over spending. The president, she noted, has many ways, including their veto power, to influence policy and legislation, but once the bill becomes law, “federal agencies MUST follow and administer laws as approved. The White House does not always get its way and should NOT have the authority to interfere with program and policy decisions once they are established in law.”

Other DPH members highlighted different angles. Writing from North Carolina, researcher Abigail Hatcher, who studies violence during pregnancy, noted, “The OMB rule is bad for all North Carolinians, including Republican constituents. After the 2028 elections, whether the Executive branch is run by Democrats or Republicans, science allocated by political appointees rather than experts will be more corrupt, less innovative, and undermine North Carolina's national position as a research hub.”

Arizonan Charles Eck echoed the point about corruption, arguing that the provisions of the rule “construct a systemic architecture for corruption… Allowing agencies to cancel active, compliant grants for political reasons converts secure, legally binding funding contracts into tools of extortion.”

In its own organizational comments, DPH noted that the rule can be traced to Project 2025, which explicitly attacked the National Institutes of Health, and spelled out the damage it would do to health research.

Writing from Alabama, Shey Thorn, executive director of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, laid out potentially devastating repercussions for HIV/AIDS care: “The proposed restrictions surrounding diversity, equity, inclusion, and so-called ‘gender ideology’ under §200.300 raise significant concerns because HIV disproportionately affects communities that have historically experienced stigma, discrimination, and barriers to healthcare. Healthcare providers must be able to discuss race, sexual orientation, gender identity, stigma, housing instability, poverty, and other social determinants of health honestly and respectfully if they are to provide effective prevention and treatment services.”

DPH Coordinating Committee member Bruce Mirken noted the broader implications of the provision regarding “gender ideology” (the administration’s pejorative name for the widely accepted scientific understanding of sex and gender), noting that it could imperil not just healthcare, but all manner of federal funding in states like his home state of Hawaii that have chosen to acknowledge and protect their transgender residents.

OMB is supposed to respond to comments received and potentially revise the proposed rule in response. It may extend the deadline for comments or delay the October 1 effective date previously announced. In any case, DPH will continue its campaign pressing Congress to intervene to stop the rule, with over 4,000 letters to Congress generated so far. Litigation remains an option should the rule be finalized in anything like its present form.

###

Defend Public Health is a volunteer-driven network of public health researchers, healthcare workers, advocates and allies fighting to protect the health of all from the Trump administration's cruel attacks on proven, science-based public health policies. We believe that everyone has the right to what they need for a healthy life, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender or gender identity.
DefendPublicHealth.org