Pharma CEO silence is complicity in the destruction of U.S. science. Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought has poured gas on the foundations of science. Pharma CEOs should demand that President Donald Trump take away the matches. For more than a year, the Trump administration has been weakening the institutions that made the United States the global leader in biomedical innovation. This week, Vought revealed that the objective is not merely to shrink the federal research enterprise, but to make it subservient to political and ideological objectives. Vought’s proposed rule would require senior political appointees to review and approve every discretionary federal grant before it is awarded, explicitly barring them from deferring to peer reviewers, and would mandate that all grant programs align with the president’s policy priorities, rather than scientific need or expert consensus. It seeks to introduce ideological tests on applicants and institutions that receive grants, bar most international scientific collaboration, and allow political appointees to cancel grants at any time without providing an explanation. The proposal also would allow agencies to make grants that haven’t been publicly announced, opening the process to corruption and favoritism. If implemented, the proposal would represent the most serious assault on U.S. science since World War II. Even those who agree with the Trump administration’s views on social and political issues should be alarmed. Future administrations with very different views may not abandon the temptation to wield control over scientific funding to advance ideological agendas. More at biocentury.com/article/65961… (no paywall).