The editors of Diabetes Care, the American Diabetes Association's (ADA) flagship journal, have published their third editorial of 2026 opposing federal research policy, targeting a proposed rule that would give political appointees authority over federal grant decisions.
The editorial, entitled “Please Tell Me It Is Only a Nightmare—The Proposed Dismantling of the United States Federal Research Infrastructure,” was published online on June 8 in Diabetes Care and was authored by Editor-in-Chief Steven E. Kahn, MB, ChB, and other journal editors in response to the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) May 29 proposed rule on federal financial assistance (docket OMB-2026-0034), which the authors described as “draconian and outrageous.”
The OMB proposal would replace the Uniform Guidance governing federal grants with a new Uniform Grants Regulation, implementing an August 2025 executive order on federal grantmaking. The full docket text, which exceeds 400 pages, includes agency-specific provisions. According to the proposal and analyses by law firms Faegre Drinker and Wiley Rein and the higher-education group the American Council on Education, a review of the text determined that the rule would require senior political appointees to conduct a "pre-issuance review" of every notice of funding opportunity and every discretionary award to ensure that awards advance the President's policy priorities, allow agencies to terminate or suspend active discretionary awards at the agency's "interest," and impose new limits on allowable costs such as advertising, public relations, publication, lobbying, and conferences.
Kahn and his co-authors argued that, if enacted, the proposal would shift grant decisions from expert peer review to political appointees, damage peer review and institutional autonomy, restrict federally funded publication costs and travel to scientific meetings, and replace scientific integrity with political orthodoxy. The editorial authors urged scientists, institutions, and the public to submit comments during the public comment period, which closes July 13. The planned effective date is October 1.
The editorial appeared days after the ADA's 2026 Scientific Sessions in New Orleans was upended by a related controversy. On June 5, five physicians and researchers—including Kahn—were escorted from the convention center by security and local police after distributing copies of an earlier Diabetes Care editorial in the series, "Misguided Brushes of a Pen Continue to Dismantle and Destroy Biomedical Research in the United States: We Can No Longer Afford Complacency and Fear. We Must All Act Now!" This editorial criticized operational changes at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The removals were first reported by MedPage Today and independently confirmed by STAT News.
The April 29 editorial cited an 89% decline in NIH Notices of Funding Opportunities over the first 13 months since Donald Trump’s return to the White House—from 787 the year prior to just 84. Drawing on an Association of American Universities analysis of NIH RePORTER data, a roughly two-thirds drop in grant awards were reported during the first 5 months of fiscal year 2026. The editorial authors also criticized OMB’s shift toward “multiyear forward funding,” which the authors said could sharply reduce the number of grants funded annually, including by 40% under the scenario they described.
The response was swift. ADA President-Elect Jennifer Green, MD, Professor of Medicine at the Duke Clinical Research Institute, and Mark A. Atkinson, PhD,Planning Committee Chair of the Scientific Sessions and a co-author of the June 8 editorial, both resigned in the days following the expulsion. The reasons were not disclosed. Atkinson had signed off on an ADA statement defending the ejections before stepping down. Forty-five former ADA presidents and board chairs signed a letter of disapproval to the current board, accusing them of stifling the voices of those who handed out the editorial, and a petition launched by physician-scientist David M. Nathan, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, gathered thousands of signatures. The ADA said the attendees had violated the meeting's code of conduct by distributing materials without authorization, and stated that the action was taken because of the policy violation, "not because of the viewpoints expressed in those materials," adding that it maintains "a strictly nonpartisan environment at all organizational events and functions."
All three 2026 editorials noted that the views are the authors' own and that the ADA had no role in their development. The authors disclosed honoraria from the ADA for their editorial roles and grant funding from the NIH.
