The Office of Management and Budget proposed political review of federal grants in May 2026, as researchers began moving abroad amid delayed awards and funding cuts. Congress temporarily blocked the proposal through December 11, 2026.
Background: Projected Brain Drain in the U.S.: Early-Career Talent Exits Rise
Halley Froehlich moved to Finland after delays and concerns about future support. Nobel laureate Omar Yaghi left the University of California, Berkeley, for a post at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
The White House says the administration is cutting waste. Spokesperson Liz Huston said Trump is “ending waste” and is “committed to keeping America the world leader in scientific innovation, and that means funding real science.”
Researchers at every career stage are considering jobs abroad
There is no national count of scientists who have left. But an April report from the Business for Federal Research Funding Coalition found that more than half of American states had lost scientists to overseas recruitment programs. Association of American Universities senior vice president Tobin Smith said universities are losing leading faculty.
“You can almost talk to any vice president for research at a university and they will tell you of one or two top faculty that they've lost.”
Major research institutions accepted 15% fewer doctoral applicants for fall 2026 than a year earlier. Last March, early-career biomedical scientists were about 20 percentage points less likely to say they would “now” stay in the United States than they recalled feeling six months earlier. Physics Ph.D. graduates in 2025 left the country at the highest rate in 30 years, according to the American Institute of Physics.
Froehlich moved with her husband and daughter to Finland, where she studies how fish, shellfish and seaweed respond to climate change at the University of Helsinki. She secured five years of guaranteed funding, worth about $3 million. Her family has been in the United States since the 1700s, and she had expected to build her scientific career there.
Christine Stawitz also left federal research, moving from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to the University of Birmingham in England. She said the country’s reputation has changed.
“It used to be the shining city on the hill where we all want to go. That reputational loss, I think, is hard to quantify, but also really damaging.”
Canada, France, Belgium and Finland have promoted U.S. researchers they recruited. France announced funding this year for dozens of U.S.-based scientists willing to relocate. China has expanded recruitment programs, with some cities and provinces offering lump-sum payments and monthly allowances.
A Nobel laureate is building an AI chemistry institute in Beijing
Yaghi, 61, became a full-time Chair Professor after sharing the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Susumu Kitagawa of Kyoto University and Richard Robson of the University of Melbourne. They were honored for developing metal-organic frameworks, porous structures made by linking metal ions with carbon-based molecules. More than 100,000 varieties exist, with potential uses including carbon capture and devices that collect drinking water from air.
At a July 3 appointment ceremony, university president Li Luming presented Yaghi with his appointment letter. He had been an honorary professor there since 2022 and was elected a Foreign Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2025. At Berkeley, he held the James and Neeltje Tretter Professor of Chemistry chair.
Yaghi will lead the AI Chemistry and Materials Research Institute, also called AIMATRY, focused on using artificial intelligence to design and synthesize materials. The university says the institute aims to shorten development cycles “by orders of magnitude.” Yaghi said he wants to develop materials for water scarcity, carbon neutrality and sustainable development, and train young scientists in AI-enabled chemistry.
Born in Jordan to Palestinian refugees, Yaghi immigrated to the United States at 15 to study. He described the grant environment as “not so encouraging” and warned that engagement with artificial intelligence is a matter of “survival” for U.S. research. His Irvine-based company, Atoco, plans to begin taking orders later this year for technology that harvests water from air. Chief executive Samer Taha said the move would “multiply the opportunities for transformative discoveries.”
The proposed rule would give political appointees a grant veto
President Donald Trump’s August 2025 executive order, “Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking,” directed agency heads to appoint senior political officials to review discretionary awards. The May proposal would extend that scrutiny to all competitive grant awards before agencies finalize them.
Political appointees or their designees would decide whether an award demonstrably advances the president’s priorities. The proposal would leave those decisions to political officials without review and expand agencies’ power to end grants “for convenience.” The prospect has raised fears of political interference in research funding.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says grant processes have already been used to pressure applicants, delay awards through political review, cancel funding for reasons unrelated to a grant’s purpose and slow money through grant conditions. The group says the proposal’s effects could reach public safety, education and clean energy, as well as scientific research.
Congress blocked the rule as the White House weighed a second review plan
A continuing resolution signed into law on September 2, 2026, funds the government through the deadline and blocks OMB from implementing the proposed changes to the Uniform Guidance, or a substantially similar proposal, during that period.
Rep. Emilia Sykes (OH-13) voted for the Senate amendment to H.R. 6500, the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2027. She had also joined three letters opposing the OMB proposal, including letters from the Democratic Women’s Caucus and House Democrats.
“The amended legislation blocks additional funding for ICE and CBP without the implementation of safeguards or accountability measures.”
After Congress passed the measure, the White House considered a separate executive order that would have given political appointees, including OMB Director Russell Vought and NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, power to block National Institutes of Health grants. Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins said OMB “should not be involved in any agency decisions on the awards of grants.”
Collins wrote to the two officials on September 22, warning that the proposed order could undermine NIH’s scientific merit-review process. By September 23, the White House was backing away from the plan after lawmakers objected. Collins argued that imposing similar requirements through an executive order or guidance would conflict with Congress’s action.
Rescission requests widen the funding dispute
The administration’s science-funding cuts and freezes have reached up to $174 billion since Trump began his second term. Separately, on September 25, the White House sent Congress 11 proposed rescissions totaling $810 million across several departments and international assistance programs.
The largest request, roughly $567 million, targeted the Department of Health and Human Services’ Refugee and Entrant Assistance account. The proposals also included funding for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The Government Accountability Office concluded that the Impoundment Control Act does not let the president withhold proposed rescissions beyond the funds’ expiration.
Once a president submits a formal rescission request, the administration may withhold the funds for 45 days of continuous congressional session while Congress considers it. The administration characterized the request as a “pocket rescission,” submitted days before the affected funds expired at the end of the fiscal year.
Appropriators are drafting safeguards for lawmakers’ November return
Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins and ranking member Patty Murray are leading work on language to protect medical research grants in the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill. Senators are also considering safeguards for environmental research.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, chair of the Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, said lawmakers must use available protections in spending bills. Sen. Bill Cassidy, who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, questioned whether restrictions could prevent future workarounds. Sen. John Kennedy said he was prepared to “fight” fellow appropriators over the guardrails, adding that bureaucrats “ought to have supervision.”
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, the ranking Democrat on the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee, said, “The action is going to happen in the lame duck.” Committee staffers are drafting language for senators’ return to Washington in November, as lawmakers consider whether to extend grant protections beyond the current stopgap.
