The White House is seeking to exert more control over billions of dollars in annual government grants, aiming to restrict a vast swath of funding — in health, housing, science and transportation — so that it primarily serves the purposes and organizations politically aligned with President Trump.
While the administration says that its primary goal is to safeguard taxpayer money, its proposal amounts to a major escalation in its attempt to reimagine the nation’s spending, even as Congress and the courts continue to rebuke the president for abusing such powers.
Mr. Trump’s ambitions were made clear in a roughly 400-page blueprint that was released to little fanfare on Friday. If finalized, it would require all federal grants to be approved by the president’s political appointees, who must ensure that the money would “demonstrably advance the president’s policy priorities.”
For the agencies that issue those awards and the nonprofit groups, local governments, universities and other entities that receive the money, the Trump administration would also impose a set of highly prescriptive and political criteria.
The government could not issue grants to projects or groups that “deny the biological reality of sex or the sex binary in humans,” for example. Nor could it seek to fund initiatives that “promote anti-American values,” contribute to illegal immigration, advance diversity, equity and inclusion or assist in voter registration.
The rules would further limit the ability of grant recipients to engage in some “issue advocacy.” Those that are funded would be scrutinized for their compliance with “religious liberty laws” and their “memberships and affiliations” with outside groups. And they could face the outright termination of their grants if the Trump administration someday determines that their actions are not in the “public interest.”
The restrictions echo the string of executive orders that Mr. Trump signed shortly after returning to office, many of which have been challenged or blocked in court. This time, however, the White House has pursued its restrictions by proposing a regulation, which is expected to become final after the government solicits public comment. The result could be applied far more broadly, and perhaps in ways that are harder to fight legally or undo later, according to budget experts.
The consequences could fall hardest on health and science, a field in which Mr. Trump has pursued some of the steepest cuts in his second term.
In exchange for federal assistance, researchers would face limits on the subjects that they can explore, the foreign labs with which they may collaborate and even the conferences at which they can appear. Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, the chief executive of the American Public Health Association, a professional organization and advocacy group, said the policy could “devastate innovation, science and research” in the United States.
Dr. Benjamin said the Trump administration sought to “codify a lot of the things they tried to do” over the past year that courts previously had rejected. That included an attempt to cut billions in grant funding for the National Institutes of Health, which his association sued to stop.
While Dr. Benjamin said he could not predict what legal steps, if any, his group might take in response to the newest White House proposal, he said of its publication generally, “You can be sure this is going to be challenged.”
An official at the White House budget office, who would only describe the administration’s thinking on the condition of anonymity, said the proposed regulations were consistent with the president’s recent directives and current law.
The official said that the goal was to promote transparency, efficiency and accountability around federal grants, which would now be suspended if they are not in compliance with the new rules.
The Trump administration would also require those that receive government aid to scrutinize the use of taxpayer dollars more closely for fraud. In general, its policies would not apply to all federal spending, meaning that money doled out based on criteria established in law — like entitlement programs, block grants and other spending mandates — would not be affected.
“The whole idea here is to basically have one control tower,” said Daniel Kowalski, a budget expert at the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation. “There’s one executive, and all the agencies should be working to implement the executive’s agenda.”
The proposal was only the latest attempt by the Office of Management and Budget, led by Russell T. Vought, to exert power over federal funding. The preamble to its sprawling new blueprint reaffirmed Mr. Vought’s view that much of the government’s ledger is riddled with spending that is wasteful, “divisive” or “woke.”
The language mirrored Mr. Trump’s past budget proposals, which Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill have rejected over the past year, fearing the president’s proposed cuts could undermine critical government services. Yet Mr. Trump has frequently disregarded the instructions of Congress anyway, opting to move around or outright cancel billions of dollars in congressionally approved spending.
So far, the administration has stalled or blocked aid for child care, disaster preparedness, green energy, education, food stamps, foreign assistance, mental health, public broadcasting, research and transportation infrastructure, according to court records and public statements. In cases that date back to the early, disruptive days of the Department of Government Efficiency, judges have found that many of Mr. Trump’s actions have violated the law.
Cerin Lindgrensavage, a lawyer at Protect Democracy, a government watchdog, said there are still “absolutely places where, in response to Congress rejecting cuts, that O.M.B. has implemented those cuts unlawfully.”
Her organization has sued to force the release of detailed White House budget records, which the administration previously tried to keep secret. Still, Ms. Lindgrensavage said there was a “lot in common” between Mr. Trump’s past moves and his newly proposed grant rules, which could further “risk politicizing spending across the federal government.”
The regulations, which the White House budget office aims to finalize and put into place by October, would formalize many of Mr. Trump’s past executive orders. That includes an August directive that subjected federal grants to heightened political review.
Sarah Saadian, the senior vice president of public policy and campaigns at National Council of Nonprofits, which represents more than 30,000 organizations, said the regulatory blueprint was an attempt by the White House to “achieve what they haven’t been able to achieve in courts.”
Ms. Saadian’s group successfully fought the administration in the opening days of Mr. Trump’s second term, when his budget office tried to freeze all federal spending. With the newly proposed restrictions, she warned that many nonprofits — which receive federal grants to provide child care, health, housing and other services on behalf of the U.S. government — may simply decide it is “not worth the risk” to seek funding.
“Communities will be shut out of federal programs, even though Congress passes funding for those programs,” she said.
In the weeks before it proposed the new regulations, the White House appeared to foreshadow its tactics. A memo from the budget office issued in May instructed federal agencies to inventory all of the grants provided to “certain nonprofit organizations,” according to a copy viewed by The New York Times.
The memo targeted about four dozen organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Urban League and some legal aid groups, the materials show. The White House request appeared similar to one it sent months earlier that looked to restrict money primarily to states led by Democrats.
Still, much remains unclear about how the White House might actually enact its new regulations. That includes how far it would go to apply some of its proposed restrictions that prohibit the use of federal dollars for “issue advocacy” or for “initiatives that compromise public safety or promote anti-American values.”
Many researchers expressed particular alarm about the implications for their work, citing the risks in having political appointees, not subject-matter experts, deciding the merit of scientific pursuits.
“It means that all grants, not just science grants, are now subject to the rules that are defined by the White House, rather than by a technical agency,” said Cole Donovan, the director of science policy and advocacy at Stand Up for Science, a group that supports federal research spending. He previously served as an international technology adviser in the Biden administration.
Since returning to office, Mr. Trump has pursued vast cuts to funding at agencies like the National Institutes of Health. His attempts to revoke billions of dollars there have ping-ponged around federal courts, but the legal challenges have not stopped the administration from slowing down the delivery of that funding in other ways.
The newly proposed regulations specifically require political appointees to fund only “gold standard science.” That is a reference to an executive order signed by Mr. Trump last year that prompted many researchers to express outrage about the politicization of their work and the attempt to undermine scientific independence.
“This is a major escalation in the Trump administration’s war on science and its efforts to choke off funding to whatever communities Trump decides to target,” said Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, who leads her party on the Senate Appropriations Committee. She added in a statement that “Republicans should work with Democrats to stop this rule in its tracks.”
