‘This is everybody’: How sweeping changes to federal funding could upend research — and much more

For the past 10 years, Mark Albers has studied how existing medications could be repurposed to treat Alzheimer’s, a disease that’s expected to double in prevalence by 2060 and has no cure.

The work, which is funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, could yield a potential treatment faster than the often decades-long process of developing a new drug, said Albers, a neurologist at Mass General Brigham.

But the research — a joint effort by experts at MGB, Harvard Medical School, MIT, Imperial College London, and the University of Haifa in Israel — relies on access to large sets of datafrom other countries. And that global collaboration may be at risk as the Trump administration moves to overhaul how federal grants are awarded — including restricting international partnerships — to be in line with its “domestic-first” priorities.

With Massachusetts receiving the most NIH funding per capita, the proposed rules are expected to have an outsized effect on a state that is politically deeply at variance with Trump’s policies. And at the ground level, they could undermine Albers’s efforts to solve the riddle of Alzheimer’s.

“I see how much hope research provides our patients,” he said. “Extra headwinds are only going to slow down the field.”

The Trump administration is not only seeking to expand its efforts to slash federal funding for disfavored topics and academic institutions, it is also trying to make it harder to challenge those decisions in court.

“The government has never changed the rules of the game this much,” said Scott Delaney, cofounder of Grant Witness, which tracks terminated scientific research grants. “It is jaw-dropping in its scope and in the amount of power that the executive branch is trying to grab away from not just experts, but also Congress.”

The proposed regulation, which is open for public comment until July 13 and could be finalized as early as Oct. 1, puts federal funding decisions in the hands of political appointees and mandates that each grant and contract align with Trump administration priorities.It would allowthe executive branch to disregard external scientific reviews and give it power to end funding at will.

Nearly 280,000 comments , including many from Massachusetts, were submitted as of Saturday morning. A New York Times analysis found a large majority appeared to oppose the new rule, though the comments are not necessarily reflective of broader public opinion.

The changes are intended to “improve transparency, accountability, and oversight” for federal grants and contracts and aim to ensure that taxpayer dollars are “ultimately used to serve the needs of the American public,” according to the .

But critics say the proposal amounts to a “brazen power grab,” in the words of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It could have far-reaching effects on any recipients of federal funding, including states and municipalities, according to experts.

“Last year was trying to pick one researcher or one institution off at a time,” said Nancy Krieger, a professor of social epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “This is everybody all at once.”

Taking control

The new initiative to reshape federal grantmaking follows legal setbacks to the Trump administration’s efforts last year to cut or freeze thousands of grants worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Much of that funding was restored by courts after lawsuits filed by universities, states, and scientific advocacy groups.

Those actions now seem like a “dress rehearsal,” said Krieger, who had her federal funding terminated and later restored.

A regulatory change to federal funding could be more binding than the administration’s previous strategy and harder to challenge with lawsuits, said Jeremy Paul, a law professor at Northeastern University.

“If our country wanted to commit suicide, it’s hard for me to think of anything that would be more effective at doing so than these rules,” Paul said.

Many scientists agree the grants system needs improvement. Among its shortcomings: money disproportionately goes to older scientists over younger ones and to low-risk projects over higher-risk ones that could yield bigger breakthroughs. But, in interviews and in public comments, a majority felt the new regulations would do more harm than good.

“Peer review is not perfect, but no system is perfect,” Krieger said. “But peer review, at least you’re meant to have some kind of qualification of actually knowing something empirically and substantively and methodologically and conceptually about the field. That is very different from having a political opinion about the work.”

Under the proposed rule, any multiyear grant could be terminated at any point. The government also would not be allowed to fund any DEI-related activities or projects or groups that “deny the biological reality of sex or the sex binary in humans,” as well as any initiatives deemed to “promote anti-American values.”

Grant recipients could be further targeted based on their adherence to “religious liberty laws” and “memberships and affiliations” with outside groups. Perhaps the most open-ended authority granted under the new rules would allow the Trump administration to cut off any grant if it decides it is not in the “national interest.”

On another front the new regulation would direct agencies to prioritize a “domestic-first” approach that scrutinizes international collaborations and prohibits funding for work that involves countries deemed adversarial to American institutions.

Many people from the Boston areawho submitted comments to the proposed regulation highlighted how their work, careers, and lives would be directly affected by the rules.

A chronic pain researcher at MGB wrote that suspending or terminating awards based on shifting priorities is “especially damaging” to clinical studies.

“Half-finished trials produce no usable knowledge, patient participation is squandered, and the public money already invested is lost,” the researcher wrote.

“Behind every study are people waiting for answers, for therapies, for relief, for hope,” the researcher added. “The patients I see and study live with chronic and disabling conditions, and so do their families. These proposed changes will reach them directly, by slowing or stopping the work meant to help them.”

Several commenters also raised concerns about restrictions on using funds to publish research and to attend academic conferences, where scientists exchange ideas.

Others said if this rule goes into effect, they would consider leaving the United States to continue their work elsewhere.

“While I hope to improve the lives of the American people with my research, if I am not able to pursue this aspiration in the U.S. I would rather continue to do so outside of the country,” wrote a PhD student.

Political and legal resistance

The proposed regulation has prompted pushback from lawmakers in both parties.

On July 1, Senate Democrats to Trump budget director Russell Vought urging him to rescind the proposal, noting it “exceeds OMB’s authority.” More recently, Senator Susan Collins (Republican of Maine), head of the Senate appropriations committee, asked Vought to extend the comment period and expressed concern the changes would harm small and rural communities and undermine scientific and biomedical research.

US Representative Jake Auchincloss, Democrat of Massachusetts, called the proposed rule a “five-alarm fire for American science.”

“It warps the meritocracy by which science is funded,” Auchincloss said in an interview with the Globe. “We need to activate Congress to beat this.”

Congress could vote to undo the rule, said Paul, the law professor. But Trump would need to sign it, and he likely won’t. To override a presidential veto, lawmakers would need a two-thirds supermajority vote in the House and the Senate.

If finalized, the rule is also likely to trigger “a flood of lawsuits,” Paul said. Legal challenges could argue the new regulation is not consistent with existing laws or that parts of it violate the First Amendment, he said.

But even if the regulation is watered down or held up by lawsuits, it could still have lasting effects, Delaney said.

“The administration has succeeded in sowing doubt, in creating an environment of extraordinary uncertainty for grantees,” he said. Certain research or community initiatives might not happen because people aren’t sure if their work will have sustained funding.

“The end result of all of this … is fewer tools in a toolbox to help America be stronger, healthier, and more innovative and more competitive in a global environment.”