"The first is the finalization of the Schedule F rule. The Trump administration has moved forward with a personnel policy that could strip civil service protections from thousands of federal workers. The Office of” Personnel Management estimates the rule would affect 50,000 positions across the federal workforce. For the NIH, the concern is specific: program officers and other grant-making officials could be reclassified as Schedule F employees, making them significantly easier to dismiss and far more vulnerable to political pressure over their grant decisions. The rule explicitly states that such workers can be fired for “subverting Presidential directives.”

The second pressure is less dramatic but equally corrosive. NIH staff are now required to connect at least one of their 2026 performance goals to the President’s Management Agenda, a federal website whose stated priorities include “eliminating woke, weaponization, and waste,” “downsizing the federal workforce,” and ensuring that “grants go only to high-performing recipients to advance America First priorities.”