The Academy Calls for Revisions to OMB Proposal
A new federal proposal to overhaul the allocation of government funding would impact operations for The New York Academy of Sciences.
Published July 15, 2026
By Nick Fetty
The new proposal from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), titled “Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance,” was issued earlier this year by the Trump Administration. It aims to overhaul federal government funding allocated to municipalities, educational institutions, non-profits, individuals, businesses, and more each year.
Proponents argue the new proposal enables President Trump to carry out his agenda and provides more oversight of taxpayer money, while opponents fear it will take away power from local authorities and defund critical programs, according to Forbes. The distribution of federal funding is usually handled by “civil servants and peer-review panels” but under the new proposal this task would be assigned to political appointees.
During the 45-day period between being posted on May 29 and the July 13 deadline, nearly half a million comments have been submitted on the regulations.gov portal. The Academy joins the likes of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association of American Universities, and the National Council of Nonprofits in expressing concern about how this proposal will impact its operations.
Below is an excerpt submitted for public record:
One of the oldest scientific societies in the United States—founded in 1817—the Academy is an independent, nonpartisan 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission is to drive innovative solutions to society’s challenges by advancing scientific research, education, and policy. The Academy serves a global community of scientists at every career stage through scientific conferences and symposia that convene approximately 2,600 participants each year; professional learning and STEM education programs that train more than 2,100 students and early-career scientists annually; international scientific prizes, including the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists; fellowships; the International Science Reserve (a global network for scientific crisis preparedness); and its international multidisciplinary journal Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, published since 1823 and among the oldest continuously published scientific journals in the United States.
The Academy shares OMB’s commitment to responsible stewardship of Federal funds and supports the goals of simplification, plain language, and accountability that animate much of the proposal. However, several of the proposed provisions would conflict with both existing Federal policy and longstanding, objective scientific practice, and would impose administrative burdens and barriers to the dissemination of federally funded research—burdens whose cost would exceed any savings.
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The practices the proposed OMB regulations would burden, including peer-reviewed publication, open scientific meetings, and professional scientific societies, are not overhead. They are among the objective, longstanding mechanisms by which science tests, refines, and corrects itself, and by which public investment in research yields discoveries and cures, as well as significant productivity and growth of the U.S. economy.
The Academy urges OMB to consider adopting the alternative regulatory language set out in the accompanying Appendix, which preserves OMB’s stewardship objectives while safeguarding the dissemination, validation, and exchange of scientific ideas on which federally funded science has experienced compounded returns over decades.
