President Trump seeks control of science funding

White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought appears before the House Budget Committee at the U.S. Capitol on April 15. The budget office recently proposed a rule change that would give political appointees more decision-making power over research grants. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Andrew Harnik/Getty Images The Trump administration is pursuing a bureaucratic rule change that could allow for greater political influence over billions of dollars in federal research grants. The new rule would have a broad impact on research fields, including housing and transportation. Health and science funding would be most significantly affected. "Although research has bipartisan support in the US Congress, and trust in science is above 75% across the country, the Trump administration seems as determined as ever to mortally wound the nation's scientific enterprise," Holden Thorp, editor of Science magazine, wrote in an editorial about the proposal. Published in the Federal Register on May 29, experts say the proposed changes would both codify the administration's strategies to dismantle certain fields of study in the U.S. and lend it new authority to "advance the President's policy priorities." In science, the impacts could reverberate across fields of research as varied as public health, vaccine testing, biotechnology, social and behavioral science and climate science. …