Feb 4th Update on Federal Directives on Grants

Dear Chairs and Directors,

I am using this month’s letter to update you on federal research funding issues associated with the Presidential transition. Please feel free to distribute the letter to anyone in your organization you think would benefit from seeing it.

You saw the message from the President, Provost, and me to the community last Tuesday. I followed that with a message regarding the Office of Management and Budget’s freeze on large portions of federal funding, which was subsequently rescinded.  

An ongoing source of uncertainty has been how to respond to the directives issued by various agencies (e.g., NSF, CDC, DOE) asking for certain components of funded projects (e.g., DEI-related activities) to be stopped.

Two courts have now issued orders temporarily suspending those directives. Here are some specifics:

  • One suspension—or “temporary restraining order” (TRO)—came from a federal court in Rhode Island over the weekend; the second came from a federal court in Washington, D.C., yesterday.
  • The TROs should prevent federal agencies from freezing payments and ordering work stoppages on federally funded projects and programs on the basis of the OMB Memo or the President’s recently issued executive orders.  
  • The TROs have broad scope: they cover all of the President’s recent executive orders, many agencies, and many different types of funding—including federal funding for research.


For now, the message to our research community remains the same as it has been all along: normal research activities on federal grants should continue.

We are monitoring the situation closely, particularly two aspects of the ongoing litigation:

  1. Although the TROs stop agencies from pausing or terminating awards in response to the President’s executive orders, there may still be room for agencies to continue to review awards, and potentially to order pauses by exercising their own discretion. It is unclear what additional action, if any, agencies may choose to take in the short term.
  2. The TROs will last until hearings are held, which will probably occur within a few weeks. At those hearings, each court will decide whether to grant a “preliminary injunction”—essentially, a more lasting block on the ability of the White House and federal agencies to halt federal support.

Federal research funding is absolutely critical for Stanford and for the daily work of hundreds of our faculty and their teams. I know there is uneasiness on campus about the situation. (I am a PI on federal grants and certainly do not welcome the uncertainty for my group). Nonetheless, the message to our research community should be clear: the work goes on, bold research ideas are as important as ever, and new proposals can go forward and should include whatever materials the program has prescribed for submission. Stanford will weather this.

I encourage you to check the webpage set up to provide updates. And I will continue to communicate directly with you when major developments occur.  

 

Best,

David

David Studdert

Vice Provost and Dean of Research