IMPROVING OVERSIGHT OF FEDERAL GRANTMAKING
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and to improve the process of Federal grantmaking while ending offensive waste of tax dollars, it is hereby ordered:
Section 1 . Purpose . Every tax dollar the Government spends should improve American lives or advance American interests. This often does not happen. Federal grants have funded drag shows in Ecuador, trained doctoral candidates in critical race theory, and developed transgender-sexual-education programs. In 2024, one study claimed that more than one-quarter of new National Science Foundation (NSF) grants went to diversity, equity, and inclusion and other far-left initiatives. These NSF grants included those to educators that promoted Marxism, class warfare propaganda, and other anti-American ideologies in the classroom, masked as rigorous and thoughtful investigation.
The harm imposed by problematic Federal grants does not stop at propagating absurd ideologies. An unsafe lab in Wuhan, China — likely the source of the COVID-19 pandemic — engaged in gain-of-function research funded by the National Institutes of Health. The NSF gave millions to develop AI-powered social media censorship tools — a direct assault on free speech. Taxpayer-funded grants have also gone to non-governmental organizations that provided free services to illegal immigrants, worsening the border crisis and compromising our safety, and to organizations that actively worked against American interests abroad.
