Trump Administration Releases FY27 Research Priorities Document

Posted on September 23, 2025

On Thursday, the Trump Administration released its Fiscal Year (FY) 2027 Administration Research and Development Budget Priorities and Cross-Cutting Actions Document. The document, signed by OMB Director Russ Vought and OSTP Director Michael Krastios, outlines the administration’s research priorities, describing its mission to align the government’s “role in the S&T enterprise to once again drive R&D that is bold, mission-driven, and unapologetically in service of the American people.”

Vought and Krastios list 5 top administration priorities in the coming fiscal year. The priorities are to:

Ensure Unrivaled American Leadership in Critical and Emergin Technologies
Unleash American Energy Dominance and Explore New Frontiers
Strengthen American Security
Strengthen and Safeguard American Health and Biotechnology
Assure America’s Continued Space Dominance

The memorandum also describes the administration’s intent to undertake a number of crosscutting actions to “usher in the Golden Age of American Innovation.” These include:

Implementing and Supporting Gold Standard Science
Building the S&T Workforce of the Future
Expanding and Making Accessible World-Class Research Infrastructure
Revitalizing and Strengthening America’s S&T Ecosystem
Focusing on High-Value Research Efforts.

Specifics regarding each priority can be found in the document linked above.

Supreme Court Rules on NIH Grant Cancellation

Posted on August 22, 2025

In a divided decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has cleared the way for the federal government to terminate more than $783 million in active research grants from the National Institutes of Health, a move that has drawn intense scrutiny from scientists, public health advocates, and legal scholars. The 5–4 ruling, issued August 21, allows the Trump administration to proceed with its cancellation of thousands of grants tied to topics such as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), gender identity, HIV/AIDS, and COVID-19. The majority held that disputes over terminated grants must be heard in the Court of Federal Claims, not in district courts, effectively halting a wave of legal challenges that had temporarily blocked the cuts.

The lawsuit at the center of the case was filed in the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts by a coalition of 16 states, research institutions, and advocacy organizations. In June, Judge William Young ordered the grants reinstated and invalidated the administration’s internal guidance documents that had led to the terminations. But the Supreme Court’s majority disagreed, concluding that the district court lacked jurisdiction to enforce monetary obligations tied to federal grants. While the justices left in place the lower court’s ruling against the guidance documents, they allowed the grant cancellations to proceed.

Legal experts say the shift to the Court of Federal Claims presents a steep hurdle for plaintiffs, who must now pursue complex contractual claims with limited prospects for immediate relief. Meanwhile, advocacy groups and some members of Congress are calling for legislative action to restore the funding and protect future grants from similar terminations.

Trump Signs Orders on Admissions and Grantmaking

Posted on August 8, 2025

On Thursday, President Trump signed two new executive orders relating to admissions and federal grantmaking. See summaries and links below.

Ensuring Transparency in Higher Educations Admissions

EO here and Fact Sheet here

“ENSURING ACCOUNTABILITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum directing the Secretary of Education to require higher education institutions receiving Federal financial assistance to be transparent regarding their admissions practices.

The Memorandum directs the Secretary of Education to revamp the online presentation and data collection of the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) to make it efficient, easily accessible, and intelligibly presented for parents and students.
The Memorandum instructs the Secretary of Education to expand the scope of required reporting for institutions’ admissions data in order to provide adequate transparency as determined by the Secretary of Education.
The Memorandum further instructs the Secretary of Education to increase accuracy checks for data submitted by institutions through IPEDS and take remedial action if institutions fail to submit data in a timely manner or submit incomplete or inaccurate data.”

Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking

EO here and Fact sheet here

Sec. 3. Strengthening Accountability for Agency Grantmaking. (a) Each agency head shall promptly designate a senior appointee who shall be responsible for creating a process to review new funding opportunity announcements and to review discretionary grants to ensure that they are consistent with agency priorities and the national interest. For the avoidance of doubt, this process shall not guarantee any particular level of review or consideration to funding applicants except as consistent with applicable law.

Sec. 4. Considerations for Discretionary Awards. (a) Senior appointees and their designees shall not ministerially ratify or routinely defer to the recommendations of others in reviewing funding opportunity announcements or discretionary awards, but shall instead use their independent judgment.

(b) In reviewing and approving funding opportunity announcements and discretionary awards, as well as in designing the review process described in section 3(a) of this order, senior appointees and their designees shall, as relevant and to the extent consistent with applicable law, apply the following principles, including in any scoring rubrics used to assess grant proposals:

(i) Discretionary awards must, where applicable, demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities.

(ii) Discretionary awards shall not be used to fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate:

(A) racial preferences or other forms of racial discrimination by the grant recipient, including activities where race or intentional proxies for race will be used as a selection criterion for employment or program participation;

(B) denial by the grant recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic;

(D) any other initiatives that compromise public safety or promote anti-American values.

(iii) All else being equal, preference for discretionary awards should be given to institutions with lower indirect cost rates.

Sec. 6. Implementation and Termination Clauses. (a) Within 30 days of the date of this order, each agency head shall review the agency’s standard grant terms and conditions and submit a report to the Director detailing:

(i) whether the agency’s standard terms and conditions for discretionary awards permit termination for convenience and include the termination provisions described in 2 CFR 200.340(a), including the provisions that an award may be terminated by the agency “if an award no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities” or, in the case of a partial termination by the recipient, if the agency “determines that the remaining portion of the Federal award will not accomplish the purposes for which the Federal award was made”;

(ii) whether the agency’s standard terms and conditions for discretionary foreign assistance awards permit termination based on the national interest; and

(iii) 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 under the circumstances described in subsection (i) of this section.

Recission Package Passes

Posted on July 18, 2025July 21, 2025

Much like the reconciliation bill earlier in the month, the Senate amended the Administration’s recission package and sent it back to the House for final approval. The measure, H.R.4 – Rescissions Act of 2025, has passed the House and is now headed to the President’s desk for signature.

The Administration proposed $9.4 billion in funding already appropriated to claw back claw back $1.1 billion previously allocated to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along with $7.9 billion dollars earmarked for international efforts to combat famine and disease.

The House approved the Administration’s proposal. The Senate amendment, which was led by Senator Eric Schmidt (R-MO), would preserve the following funding from cuts:

The amendment removes PEPFAR ($400 million) from the rescissions bill.
Protects funding for HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, Malaria, Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition (including polio) within the Global Health account;
Protects funding for countering PRC Influence Fund;
Protects funding for aid to Egypt and Jordan; and
Protects funding for the administration of U.S. commodity-based food aid, namely Food for Peace the McGovern-Dole.

The House passed the amended proposal.

The final bill is now waiting the President’s signature.

Dept. of Education Budget Request Released

Posted on June 2, 2025

The Trump administration has released its budget request for the Department of Education for Fiscal Year 2026, proposing steep funding cuts of more than 15%—a $12 billion reduction in budget authority. The administration characterizes these cuts as part of a broader effort to “responsibly wind down” the department.

While the president’s budget request serves as an important policy statement, it carries no legal authority. Final funding decisions rest with Congress, which determines allocations through the annual appropriations process. Several key Congressional committees are set to begin deliberations in the coming weeks, shaping the future of federal education spending.

Included below are some of the key higher education policy changes proposed in the budget request:

Pell Grant Reduction: The maximum Pell Grant award would be cut by $1,685, reducing it to $5,710 in total. The administration argues that this is necessary to address a $2.7 billion shortfall that has resulted from increasing instances of fraud as well as congressional irresponsibility.
Elimination of TRIO Programs: Federal funding for TRIO programs would be ended entirely. The administration argues that programs to support students from disadvantaged backgrounds will be better administered by individual states.
Cuts to Federal Work-Study: The administration requests to cut funding for work-study programs by $980 million. The administration hopes these proposed cuts will help to “enact a more appropriate split between Federal and employer wage subsidy, where employers pay 75 percent of a student’s hourly wages and reduce the federal contribution to 25 percent.”
Defunding GEAR UP: The GEAR UP program would also be defunded under this proposal.