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Russell Vought’s Latest Plan to Gut the Government Should Terrify You

A proposed new rule changing the way the federal government hands out money could be absolutely devastating for every single person in this country.

Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought attends an event in the Oval Office on June 22, 2026.

This is how things are supposed to work: We pay our taxes. The IRS collects them, and they are deposited into the US General Fund. These dollars from the General Fund are then disbursed to agencies according to what is authorized and appropriated to them under law by Congress. Agencies then dole this money out to state and local governments, or to community organizations and other partners, through grants or contracts. Some agency allocations decisions are formula-based (e.g., based on population or other criteria), while others depend on expert advice to make these adjudications.

But if Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought gets his way, this long-standing process will be put in the dustbin. Under proposed revisions to the Uniform Guidance that governs the expenditure of federal funds, decisions on all grants will now be in the hands of political commissars rather than subject-matter experts. The new proposed rule is over 400 pages long, and there are many other terrible provisions within it.

The new rule affects everything from healthcare, transportation, education, and food assistance to, of course, scientific research. This means grants to rural hospitals, for mass transit and road and bridge repair, for special education programs and Head Start, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and cancer research would now be subject to the whims of Russell Vought and his cronies.

In my world of scientific research, the proposed rules have set off alarm bells everywhere, even among institutions that have been cautious and reticent about taking on the Trump administration so directly until now, like Research!America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the New England Journal of Medicine, and universities like mine. They all recognize that should this rule be promulgated, it would be the end of science as we know it in America.........

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