The Office of Management and Budget is proposing a structural power grab that would effectively take over Congress’s role as the planner and funder of national social programs. From the first days of our country, Article I of our Constitution has charged Congress with that role – but, Trump’s OMB, led by Russell Vought of Project 2025, is attempting to seize that power under the guise of mundane procedural rule changes. But Project 2025, is radical, not mundane: taking control of the federal purse, and subordinating all of Congress’s funding directions to President Trump’s policy preferences—and enemies lists—is radical and unlawful. Lambda Legal’s comment in opposition to this outrageous proposed rulemaking lays out some of the most egregious ways in which this proposal is legally defective, and the sweeping ways the administration would be empowered to inflict even more devastating harm on many of the most vulnerable members of our community and our society as a whole.
The proposal is illegal from top to bottom. And if it is adopted despite the hundreds of thousands of public comments calling out its legal insufficiency and outrageous flouting of Congress’s authority, the litigation surely will come fast and furiously.
The proposed rule reaches nearly every corner of the federal government. Hospitals and health care providers, schools and universities, aging services, community organizations, and countless other grant recipients could all be required to comply with sweeping ideological conditions that are in direct conflict with the purposes Congress established for these programs. Instead of ensuring federal dollars are used effectively, the rule would make access to funding contingent on adherence to political mandates that conflict with the purposes of Congress, defy federal law, and fly in the face of constitutional protections, scientific evidence, and decades of evidence-based policymaking.
Lambda Legal strongly opposes this proposal because it attempts to accomplish through grant regulations what the administration has repeatedly sought to impose through executive action. Federal grant programs reflect choices made by the American people through their elected representatives in Congress about how taxpayer dollars should address the country’s most pressing challenges. Allowing the Executive Branch to fundamentally reshape those programs through politics-based funding conditions weakens the democratic process. The administration must not be permitted to redirect congressionally authorized programs without the public’s elected representatives ever voting to change them.
“It comes as no surprise that Russell Vought is again attempting to effectuate Project 2025’s discriminatory and anti-democratic goals, but the audacity of this proposed rule is nonetheless remarkable. This proposed rule would allow the administration unprecedented and unlawful influence over the federal grant system – to simply refuse to fund programs established by Congress – and that’s just one of the ways in which this proposed rule violates federal law ,” said Cathryn Oakley, Deputy Legal Director for Policy. “If this rule is adopted, the result would be a fundamental shift in how federal programs operate, where access to services people are entitled to and rely on every day could turn on whether their providers comply with Project 2025’s extreme ideological directives that Congress never enacted and that the American public actively rejects.”
The effects of this shift would be felt most directly in the programs people rely on every day, including public health systems like the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program. Congress created Ryan White to provide comprehensive, evidence-based care for people living with HIV, recognizing that the epidemic does not affect all communities the same way, and that successful treatment depends on meeting patients where they are. The program has become one of the nation’s most effective public health responses because providers are able to deliver integrated medical and support services that keep people engaged in care and help them achieve viral suppression.
This proposed rule would disrupt that model by treating efforts to reach communities disproportionately affected by HIV as prohibited “DEI” activities and by discouraging providers from delivering the comprehensive care that Congress intended Ryan White to support. It would force providers to choose between complying with federal funding conditions and fulfilling their obligations under the federal law and medical standards.
Similar restrictions are already being applied in the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program. Lambda Legal is actively challenging them because they conflict with the statute Congress enacted and threaten access to lifesaving HIV care. The proposed rule would not remain limited to that context. It would extend the same approach across the federal government, embedding similarly discriminatory conditions into grant programs far beyond HIV services and affecting a wide range of public programs.
Education would feel this same pressure. Schools could be required to comply with Executive Branch policies, which courts have already found are unlawful, in order to receive the federal funding that Congress previously approved. This means that schools could be forced to choose between keeping federal funding and complying with other laws that protect students and educators — an impossible situation. Federal education funding designed to expand opportunity, and support learning must not be misused to pressure schools into complying with discriminatory political agendas in order to remain funded.
These same harmful dynamics would extend beyond education into many other federally funded programs. Older adults could see changes in how services are delivered based on compliance with Executive Branch directives rather than, as Congress has directed, local assessments of need. Programs designed to protect LGBTQ+ people in correctional settings could face restrictions that limit evidence-based safety practices. Religious organizations and other grant recipients could also face uncertainty if federal funding rules shift in ways that conflict with congressionally directed program requirements.
While these programs serve many different communities, they would all be affected in the same fundamental way: access to federal funding would depend less on whether programs meet the purposes Congress established, and more on whether they comply with bigoted Executive Branch policies that have no basis in the laws that created those programs.
Congress—not the Executive Branch—determines the purposes of federal grant programs and the conditions under which federal funds are spent. The President cannot rewrite those laws through government-wide “efficiency” regulations. Public funds must be distributed according to the missions Congress establishes, guided by evidence, expertise, and the needs of the communities those programs were created to serve.
Lambda Legal has submitted formal comments urging the Office of Management and Budget to withdraw the proposed rule.
Read Lambda Legal’s full comments here.
Read the proposed rule here.
