The Trump White House has moved to codify its campaign of retribution with a proposed rule that would hand final control over federal grants to political appointees. The Office of Management and Budget wants to replace the current sign-off system with a new framework, titled Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance, that would let senior Administration officials decide whether discretionary awards fit Donald Trump's agenda.
That shift is drawing attention because it would reach far beyond one agency or one program. Hundreds of billions of dollars in funding would be covered, from awards that support local dance performances to money for massive infrastructure projects, and the first grants exposed to political review would be all discretionary awards from the federal government, since those are the awards the new process says must be assessed by senior Administration officials before they go out.
Today, grant approval generally rests with civil servants and peer-review panels. Under the new proposal, that judgment would move upstairs. Political appointees could deny awards they say do not fit the President's agenda, and they could terminate grants later for the same reason. In practical terms, that would give the White House direct leverage over money that now flows through agencies ranging from the National Endowment for the Arts to the Transportation Department.
Elizabeth Ginexi warned recently that federal grants are not a side issue for state budgets. In a recent Substack post, she wrote that they represent, on average, 36 cents of every dollar a state spends, and said the proposal would put the entire financial partnership between the federal government and the states under political control, without an act of Congress. Her point captures why the plan has landed so hard: this is not just a change in paperwork, but a change in who gets to decide what public money is for.
The White House says the new rules are meant to improve transparency, accountability and oversight for federal awards. Critics see something else. Hal Duncan said at his confirmation hearing last month that the proposal would keep federal money from supporting what he called divisive D.E.I. ideologies, while Patty Murray accused the White House of trying to turn the entire federal government into one big slush fund to reward those aligned with the Administration and punish everyone else. The National League of Cities, the School Superintendents Association and the National Council of Nonprofits have also raised concern about the changes.
The broader pattern is why this proposal matters now. The Trump Administration has already indicted, investigated, threatened to investigate or threatened to prosecute perceived enemies, dispatched troops to Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, sued Harvard and U.C.L.A. and withheld billions of dollars from groups and projects it deems woke or wasteful. The new rule would push that approach into the grant system itself, where the immediate question is not whether the White House wants more control, but which awards it would move against first once the proposal becomes binding policy.
