The White House just released a new Executive Order concerning federal scientific grants. A lot of legalese in these orders to wade through, but a few key points that I seem to be able to get from it is:

• More oversight and approval processes involving political and other senior level appointees

• Increased involvement of OMB in federal scientific grant programs

• Mandatory termination clauses that allow the federal government to terminate a grant for “convenience”

• Agencies cannot issue new notices of federal funding opportunities (NOFOs) until they have new policies and procedures implementing this EO in place

At a minimum, this looks to seriously add to the bureaucratic processes of federal scientific research and grantmaking, slowing the process and making it more difficult for federal science agencies to spend the budgets they receive.