Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, WHITE HOUSE NEWS—Executive order specifies that discretionary awards ‘must… demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities’, (Aug 11, 2025)

By Brandi O. Brown, J.D.

Senior appointees or their designees will review funding opportunity announcements and grant awards.

Last week, the White House issued a new executive order—this one targeting federal grantmaking and citing some of President Trump’s favored talking points, such as the allegedly government-funded “drag shows in Ecuador” and “unsafe lab in Wuhan, China” that allegedly is “likely the source of the COVID-19 pandemic.” It also levies an accusation against NSF for giving “millions to develop AI-powered social media censorship tools,” which it describes as “a direct assault on free speech.”

“Even for projects receiving Federal funds that serve an ostensibly beneficial purpose,” the order claims, “the Government has paid insufficient attention to their efficacy.”

“In short,” the order contends, “there is a strong need to strengthen oversight and coordination of, and to streamline, agency grantmaking to address these problems, prevent them from recurring, and ensure greater accountability for use of public funds more broadly.”

Political appointees must review. According to the order’s accompanying fact sheet, “Going forward, President Trump’s appointees will review funding opportunity announcements and grant awards[.]” It states that “[a]ward decisions will undergo more rigorous evaluation by political appointees and subject matter experts to ensure they benefit the American public, align with Administration priorities, and are coordinated across agencies to avoid duplication.” It will also allow for “termination of future grants that do not meet these criteria, including if grantees use their awards in a manner that is inconsistent with the policy objectives in the Order.”

Additionally, agencies are required to simplify funding opportunity announcements with “plain language” and directed “to award grants to a wide array of meritorious grantees, not just the universities and nonprofits that have received awards year after year.”

Must advance President’s policy priorities. Within the order itself, it states that in addition to demonstrably advancing the President’s policy priorities, discretionary awards (defined within the order as “a grant that is a ‘discretionary award’ as that term is defined in 2 CFR 200.1”) discretionary awards also “shall not be used to fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate” racial preferences, denial by the grant recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic, illegal immigration, or “any other initiatives that compromise public safety or promote anti-American values.”

It sets out other requirements, but also notes that nothing in the order should be “construed to discourage or prevent the use of peer review methods to evaluate proposals for discretionary awards or otherwise inform agency decision making, provided that peer review recommendations remain advisory and are not ministerially ratified, routinely deferred to, or otherwise treated as de facto binding by senior appointees or their designees.” However, it adds that “nothing in this order shall be construed to create any rights to any particular level of review or consideration for any funding applicant except as consistent with applicable law.”

News: WhiteHouseNews GovernmentContracts