U of A leader joins opposition to proposed federal research funding changes

The White House Office of Management and Budget released a proposed rule change to the “Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance” that they say will “improve transparency, accountability and oversight for Federal awards across the Federal Government.”

“This includes ensuring that American tax dollars are not wasted or misused, activities performed under Federal awards are consistent with law and policy, and recipients are held accountable when they fail to meet relevant standards,” the 400-page proposal states in its summary. “The revisions also aim to ensure that basic American principles of equality and equal opportunity are upheld throughout all stages of the award making process and that unlawful discrimination is no longer permitted.”

The Trump administration's proposed rule change was posted publicly on May 29. If implemented, it will take effect on Oct. 1.

OMB is accepting public comments for this rule change till July 13. As of July 9, nearly 99K comments have been posted.

Dozens of faculty members, researchers and organizations based in Arizona and from the three public universities have also posted comments.

Unlike the White House “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” in fall 2025, which was first sent exclusively to nine universities including the UA, this proposed rule change was posted publicly for all universities and organizations.

UA President Suresh Garimella had rejected the earlier compact, saying academic freedom, merit-based research funding and institutional independence must be preserved.

“A federal research funding system based on anything other than merit would weaken the world’s preeminent engine for innovation, advancement of technology, and solutions to many of our nation’s most profound challenges,” Garimella wrote last year in his response to U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon.

Tomás Díaz de la Rubia, UA’s senior vice president for research and partnerships, sent his comments on the newest proposal to OMB on Thursday. He pushed back on the changes and said he thinks numerous provisions require more clarity and more objective and risk-based standards.

Díaz de la Rubia also said the proposal needs an extended implementation timeline that is workable, saying the “compressed timeline” might lead to “inconsistent application, unintentional non-compliance, and operational disruption across the research enterprise.” He asked OMB to provide at least a one-year transition period for this proposal to take effect.

UA’s response to the proposed changes

"The University of Arizona supports the administration's goals of strengthening accountability, protecting taxpayer dollars and safeguarding research security," Mitch Zak, the UA spokesman, told the Star. 

"At the same time, we've encouraged the Office of Management and Budget to refine several provisions of the proposed rule to preserve merit-based scientific review, provide greater clarity and allow sufficient time for implementation," Zak said. "Our comments recommend objective, risk-based oversight that maintains strong accountability while minimizing unnecessary administrative burden and ensuring that the university’s federally funded research can continue to advance scientific discovery and benefit the America and beyond."

Zak did not immediately respond to the Star's request to interview Díaz de la Rubia.

The OMB proposal will essentially subject research grants to political review. That means political appointees and not peer reviewers will be the primary decision-makers on which grants get funded. Federal officials also would be able to eliminate funding even after a grant is awarded or research work has begun.

Díaz de la Rubia said the changes would reduce transparency and objectivity in the award process and “high-quality research may be deprioritized for reasons unrelated to scientific merit, weakening the integrity of the federal research enterprise and diminishing the United States’ global leadership in innovation and discovery.”

Giving federal officials the authority to subjectively suspend or terminate research grants would bring in “significant uncertainty” for researchers and make long-term research efforts and multi-year projects unstable. Hence, he said, OMB should only terminate grants in cases of non-compliance with federal priorities or “clear programmatic failure.”

The proposed rule change would require applicants for research funding to comply with what OMB calls “Gold Standard Science” and align with the Trump administration’s policies and priorities.

“These concepts are not clearly defined and may vary across agencies, creating inconsistency in how expectations are applied to research institutions,” Díaz de la Rubia said. “At the same time, other provisions in the proposed rule introduce subjective criteria into funding decisions, which conflicts with the objective, merit-based principles that “Gold Standard Science” is intended to represent.”

With this change, OMB said agencies will be able to use their discretion and restrict funding for broadly defined policy areas, such as undefined concepts like “anti-American values,” which Díaz de la Rubia said brings in subjective criteria, that go beyond scientific merit, to decide who gets research funding. This would lead to institutions not knowing which activities are allowed and what are the boundaries of the research scope.

This will ultimately constrain innovation, he said.

UA Faculty Chair Leila Hudson said she and other faculty members appreciated Díaz de la Rubia’s response to OMB and approach to the conversation, saying the memo he put out was well-articulated. She said it conveyed clearly that “anything that introduces subjective or unclear or poorly defined standards is, at the broadest level, not going to improve the federal grant making process.”

She said if you’re going to approve research grants in the federal funding process, it needs to be done “around well-defined, stable, and non-political frameworks and concepts that can be objectively complied with.”

“I think what they did in that memo that was very good — without being in any way inappropriately political — was merely to focus on the processes of merit-based, peer-reviewed qualities that are absolutely essential to research excellence at any particular institution, at any particular project, or across the board nationally.”

The OMB proposal states that there will be restrictions on international collaborations moving forward and increased scrutiny of foreign relationships and affiliations, but doesn’t relate these restrictions to any specific risks.

Díaz de la Rubia said this will hinder the U.S.’s ability to work with international experts, access global research networks and “limit the ability of U.S. institutions to attract and retain top talent.” OMB should have a more “targeted” approach that is based on specific risks, instead of resorting to oversight that’s based on “broad, restrictive requirements,” he said.

The changes include a 30-day risk assessment once a research grant gets funded, but don’t have a standardized process to conduct this risk review, Díaz de la Rubia said. In addition to the inconsistencies in how “risk” is evaluated, which will create confusion for institutions, he also said this will create a huge volume of added work for federal research agencies each month, considering the number of grants that get awarded.

The proposal also includes restrictions on essential research-related expenses, including publication fees, professional memberships, subscriptions, and conference participation, and Díaz de la Rubia said this would shift a substantial share of the “financial burden of federally-funded research” onto institutions and “reduce the ability to recover the full costs of maintaining research infrastructure.”

This will limit the distribution of scientific findings, collaboration and professional development opportunities, all of which are important for advancing research.

OMB also said institutions that have lower indirect costs, which are overhead costs for administrative activities in research projects, will be given preference while choosing which research grants should get funded.

Díaz de la Rubia said such prioritization would be “undermining the objectivity and integrity of merit-based evaluation.” Because an institution having a lower indirect cost rate doesn’t automatically mean that they’re more efficient or deserving of federal funds, he said.

“These rates are federally negotiated and reflect different facilities, compliance needs, research activities, and institutional circumstances. They therefore should not serve as a comparative factor in funding decisions,” he said.

The OMB proposal includes removals of fixed-amount awards and subawards, which means shifting to reimbursement models that will take time away from research activities and increase the overarching costs of federally-funded research projects. Additionally, there will be added administrative steps in processing payments for federal research grants, and this will slow down the timely distribution of funds and create cash flow challenges for institutions.

OMB also stated that the “subrecipients” of a research grant — a non-federal entity that receives a portion of the grant funding from the primary recipient to carry out functions of the research project — will be monitored and scrutinized increasingly. Subrecipients are not to take actions that might cause “significant reputational harm” to the institution, the federal agency or the federal government.

Díaz de la Rubia said this makes receiving federal research funding more complicated for institutions that work with partners on projects, like the UA, which has health partners.

Nearly 99,000 comments so far

Institutions and universities across the U.S. have “called for a flood of public comments” in the public comments section of the OMB proposal, where people can submit comments till July 13, as well as on social media, Substack and petitions, Inside Higher Ed reported Tuesday.

Colette Delawalla, chief executive officer of Stand Up for Science, a group she founded last year amid the Trump administration’s disruption of science, told Inside Higher Ed that a big part of this is the “yelling.”

She said they’ve launched a “frankly enormous campaign” to try and educate scientists and the larger public on what this rule change means, Inside Higher Ed reported. She said her organization is trying to “rile people up,” through their social media posts and media appearances opposing what she calls this “overtly fascist” proposal.

People commenting in the public section of the OMB proposal say the proposed changes will be “catastrophic to scientific research and seriously risk eroding the U.S.’s dominance of the scientific and technology economy,” and that “science needs oversight by scientists, not political appointees with agendas.”

They have called out the federal administration to “keep politics out of science in order to keep being leaders of the world in science and innovation.”

Science “needs to be free to ethically and purposefully explore natural phenomena, develop theories, conduct experiments, promote innovation, enhance knowledge and inform policy,” said a comment posted June 17. “It needs to be nonpartisan. It needs to be reviewed by experts with extensive scientific knowledge and training. It needs to be respected, understood, and harnessed if we are to succeed — not just as a country, but as a species.”

The section also includes comments which are in support of the proposal, with one comment posted June 17 saying, “American taxpayers deserve confidence that federal funds are being spent responsibly and for their intended purposes.” “Recent reports of improper payments, fraudulent claims, and inadequate oversight have highlighted weaknesses in the current system that must be addressed,” it said.

Arizonans have also claimed the space to voice their concerns about the proposed changes, with a UA professor emeritus of pediatrics at UA’s College of Medicine pointing out that American scientists have been awarded about 320 Nobel Laureates since the awards started in 1905, and that this number is far more than any other nation.

Similarly, a researcher at Northern Arizona University said: “The U.S. has been a leader in science, technology, engineering, medicine, and STEM education since WWII, but this is just the latest attack on our position from our own administration. We are already seeing a “brain drain” where our best minds are leaving academia, industry, or even the country. Placing a partisan appointee in this position only serves the interests of the current political leaders.”

A UA student studying chemistry, bioinformatics and mathematics said they’re concerned about the rule change on “publication and open access costs,” saying “the purpose of research is to be shared for other researchers, physicians, businessmen, and even politicians to learn from.” “Instead of limiting funding for publication, we should support researchers’ ability to share knowledge with the American people,” they said.

The Chamber of Southern Arizona, an organization focused on economic development here, said: “Tucson is home to one of the world’s leading optics and photonics clusters anchored by the University of Arizona’s Wyant College of Optical Sciences and a dense regional base of optics, imaging, and aerospace-defense manufacturers that depend on a continuous pipeline of federally funded research and the graduates it trains.”

“Federal research grants are not an abstraction here; they are upstream of real jobs, real capital investment, and a real regional industry cluster that competes globally,” the chamber said. “A rule that destabilizes how that research is funded destabilizes that industry.”

A comment by a retired Tucson teacher said the impact the proposed changes would have on "health care research due to disparate-impact research and programming would be devastating.”

“Arizona’s educational system would be harmed as well since political appointee review for curriculum development, teacher training programs, essential for teacher growth, and educational research would be judged solely on political allegiance rather than the benefits gained for students and teachers,” the teacher said.

Holden Thorp, an American chemist and professor who’s also the editor-in-chief of the Science family of journals, said in an article in early June: “In any other administration, when Congress appropriates money for science each year, OMB’s job is to make sure that the funds are released in accordance with the law.”

“But in Project 2025, the blueprint used by the Trump administration to overhaul the federal government according to a theory of greater executive power, (OMB Director Russell) Vought called for an activist OMB that serves as the “keeper of ‘commander’s intent,’” thereby moving power away from Congress,” he said.

Thorp called on the scientific community to “flood OMB with responses” until the July 13 deadline and said “universities and associations must speak out as a united front to mobilize Congress and be ready to file lawsuits once the regulations are finalized.”

“The red light is now flashing. All hands, report to stations,” Thorp said.