Comment on FR Doc # 2026-12725 from Elizabeth Wilkening

I am writing in opposition to the rule changes in NSF Guidance on Financial Assistance (GFA). NSF is hurting scientific research and the benefits it provides to everyone by incorporating the Executive Orders of an administration that is killing science and the procedures for performing science. This GFA is implementing many of the OMB-2026-0034-0001 rule changes that nearly 1/2 million people opposed. NSF’s proposed Guide 25 (page 197), incorporates OMB’s proposal to allow agencies to terminate a grant or decline to issue an award for not being aligned with administration political priorities. It would even allow NSF to terminate already-awarded grants at any time for being inconsistent with an administration’s political priorities. This destroys science and what it stands for. It also subjects all NSF awards, meaning everything (not just research grants but also fellowships, training grants, center grants, undergraduate research opportunities, etc.) to review and approval by a politically appointed official before being issued through an unspecified process and under unspecified criteria, and thus contradicts everything NSF’s current merit-review process stands for. NSF’s proposed Guide 12 (page 128), would disallow NSF funds from supporting travel to scientific conferences or publication costs of research publications. Science is disseminated and made stronger when we gather researchers to present and discuss their work. Funding them to publish their work allows not only the research community but the public to understand the work. Guide 6 Section G (page 84), sets strict limitations, seeking a large reduction in projects that involve international collaboration. We need international collaboration because environmental, earth, health, biological, and space science know no boundaries and benefit from working together. Each year I attend the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting as a K-12 educator. The meeting demonstrates the learning and collaboration that occurs in Earth and Space science. We have lost many scientists that have left America under the current Federal Government because their funding was terminated and jobs were eliminated. I have immediate family who have had to move abroad to do science. Let's not lose all of our knowledge and innovation because of these rule changes proposed by NSF that politicize and destroy scientific research.