Proposed new US funding rules: We can cancel any grant at any time

Grants meet the culture war The document makes clear what sorts of things might be considered administration priorities and national interest—and they’re largely a war on woke. For example, the Trump administration canceled PEPFAR, a program meant to limit the spread of HIV in Africa; it’s a step that is estimated to lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths . But to the OMB, that’s a good thing, because the alternative was woke: “Far-left activists hijacked the critical work done by the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which was established to respond to the AIDS crisis in Africa. Due to wasteful spending, PEPFAR became a left-wing foreign aid entitlement that attempted to promote abortion and gender ideology.” (Its cited source for that is an editorial from the Heritage Foundation, a far-right-wing think tank.) While it demands “viewpoint neutral” behavior from everyone receiving money, it has no issues with engaging in viewpoint discrimination itself. For example, it outright bans any funding for “theories of disparate-impact liability,” the idea that apparently race-neutral rules might have impacts that differ based on the race of the people involved. Also banned: any attempts to compensate for the historic discrimination that has kept women and minorities from having equal opportunities in society. That’s considered DEI, and thus forbidden. …