President Trump will soon tighten his grip on the federal ledger even further by signing an executive order that requires his political appointees, not career bureaucrats, to sign off on all government grants, RealClearPolitics is first to report.
The White House described the order as part of the larger effort to ensure that taxpayer dollars align with the priorities of the president to the benefit of the public. It comes as the Trump administration continues its march through the federal bureaucracy in search of waste, fraud, and abuse.
“The days of unaccountable bureaucrats wasting taxpayer dollars on drag shows in Ecuador and other far-left initiatives are over,” White House spokesman Harrison Fields said in a statement. “Today’s executive action restores merit-based grantmaking and will save billions for the American people.”
Examples abound of what the White House sees as wasteful spending enabled by the largesse of bureaucrats. The first months of the second Trump presidency were defined in large part by his war on “woke.” Almost overnight, association with anything to do with critical race theory or gender reassignment surgery, for instance, became a death knell for academics, non-profits, and NGOs seeking more taxpayer dollars.
But the White House is taking aim at more than just culture war issues with the president’s new grant-making order. The administration believes a lack of transparency has allowed taxpayer dollars to pay for projects that endanger national security and the nation’s standing on the world stage.
A senior White House official pointed RCP to federal funding from the National Institute of Health that flowed to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Chinese research lab where U.S. intelligence agencies believe the COVID-19 pandemic likely originated. The official also singled out programming from the National Science Foundation to develop artificial intelligence tools, which Republicans allege will supercharge censorship online.
While the administration describes the new executive order as a way to democratize the grantmaking process, the White House stressed that reviews will continue to be done in coordination with subject matter experts. They will, however, become less opaque. The order requires agencies to make announcements related to funding opportunities in plain language.
The administration also plans to cast a wider net. The order requires agencies to seek out new universities and nonprofits, not just those that have previously received taxpayer dollars. Any future funding that does not meet the new standards, according to the order, will be marked for termination.
While grantmaking normally does not drive national headlines outside, Trump has made it a feature of his second term in office.
He has picked high-profile fights with the Ivy Leagues, like Harvard University, and won. He paused billions in federal funding to the National Endowment for the Humanities until those grants could be aligned with his agenda. He earned a rebuke from the Government Accountability Office earlier this month for terminating more than 1,800 research grants awarded by the National Institute of Health.
While Congress maintains the power of the purse, Trump has taken an expansive view of how appropriated monies are spent. Some on Capitol Hill have taken issue with the budgetary maneuvering that has been outside the norm so far. The administration insists that the president not only has the authority but also an obligation to direct the federal funds flow to priorities that he deems are in the best interest of the public.
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