Trump Directs Budget Chief to Draft Order Placing NIH Grant Approvals Under Appointee Board
A reported draft executive order would require unanimous approval from OMB Director Russ Vought and NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya for health research grants.
WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump has instructed his budget director to formulate an executive order that would place the allocation of federal health research grants under the direct oversight of political appointees, according to reporting by Politico.
Under the directive, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russ Vought has been tasked with creating a dedicated oversight board responsible for determining which research proposals receive funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The reporting, based on accounts from two administration officials familiar with the discussions, indicates a substantial shift in how the nation's primary medical research agency distributes its resources.
The proposed governance structure would require unanimous agreement between key officials before research grants could be awarded. The board's membership would include OMB Director Vought alongside NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya. By mandating consensus between the budget director and the NIH leadership, the mechanism would formally introduce White House budget leadership directly into the grant-making determinations of the scientific agency.
Such an arrangement would grant the White House budget office unprecedented, direct authority over the distribution of billions in congressionally appropriated health research funding. Historically, NIH grant evaluations have largely been handled through established agency processes and scientific review panels designed to evaluate research merit.
Requests for comment sent to the White House, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Department of Health and Human Services—which serves as the parent department overseeing the NIH—were not immediately answered outside standard business hours.
The reported executive initiative emerges amid widespread debate and mounting scrutiny surrounding the administration's broader approach to federal scientific funding. Over the past year, federal initiatives aimed at curtailing spending at prominent universities have resulted in the freezing, delay, or outright cancellation of numerous scientific and biomedical research grants nationwide.
The administration's funding curbs have drawn sharp pushback from within the scientific community. NIH researchers previously issued a joint declaration criticizing steep funding reductions in public health research, warning about the broader consequences for biomedical discovery and institutional stability across universities.
In response to criticism from researchers and academic institutions, the Trump administration has defended its funding interventions and spending reviews as necessary fiscal and policy corrections. Officials have maintained that tighter controls are vital to ensure federal taxpayer dollars support only robust, dependable science while reversing what the administration describes as years of misguided research priorities.
While some medical research grants have subsequently been reinstated following reviews, the creation of a centralized, appointee-led board would formalize executive branch control over future funding rounds across all NIH-supported disciplines.
If enacted, the executive order would mark a fundamental realignment in federal research administration, consolidating grant-awarding authority within a compact panel of senior officials and fundamentally altering the relationship between executive budget overseers and the nation's scientific research infrastructure.