Summary of Key Changes in OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule Russell Vought is going to destroy American Science

Russell Vought

Russell Vought’s hostility toward higher education research is not anti-intellectualism in the simple sense. It reflects an authoritarian theory of knowledge embedded in the governing vision he helped construct as a principal architect of Project 2025.

As Elizabeth Ginexi warns in her May 28, 2026 Substack analysis, OMB’s proposed overhaul of federal grant rules would translate that vision into a government-wide apparatus of political control "layered over every stage of the federal science lifecycle" such that senior appointees could override expert peer review. They could require grants to advance presidential priorities. They could subject research to an undefined standard of “Gold Standard Science,” as well as terminate ongoing awards without any finding of fraud or misconduct.

 
The proposal would also make federal support for conferences, scholarly memberships, journal access, publication, public communication, and international collaboration contingent upon administrative approval—giving political officials influence not only over what research is funded, but also over whether scholars can develop, test, share, and defend their findings.

Research would remain tolerable only when it serves the executive’s ideological agenda. Peer review becomes suspect because it is independent; academic freedom because it is pluralistic; and DEI, climate science, gender studies, public health, and civil-rights research because they can produce evidence that challenges hierarchy and concentrated power. 

What Vought calls “taming the bureaucracy” is therefore not merely an administrative project. It is an effort to subordinate universities, scientific inquiry, and public knowledge to presidential authority—to tame knowledge itself.

Yes, all of this is pretty dire and outrageous. One thing all can do is submit a public comment. Everyone should do this. The deadline is July 13, 2026 for doing so. Ultimately, we must vote this administration out of power.

-Angela Valenzuela

Summary of Key Changes in OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule
Russell Vought is going to destroy American Science

Elizabeth Ginexi | Substack | May 28, 2026

Federal Register, May 29, 2026 | Docket OMB-2026-0034 | Comment Deadline: ~July 13, 2026

https://www.federalregister.gov/public-inspection/2026-10817/regulation-for-federal-financial-assistance

1. Political Appointees Take Control of Grant Awards (§200.205)

This is arguably the most consequential change in the rule. Senior political appointees, rather than career scientists or program officers, would now be required to conduct a “pre-issuance review” of every discretionary grant before it is awarded. These appointees are explicitly forbidden from deferring to peer reviewers or routinely ratifying their recommendations.

The criteria they must apply include blocking awards that touch on denial of “the sex binary in humans,” illegal immigration, or anything deemed to “promote anti-American values.” The rule also requires that discretionary awards must:

“...demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities.”

In practice, this gives political appointees a veto over any science that conflicts with the current administration’s ideology.

2. Peer Review Is No Longer Binding (§200.205(d))

The rule explicitly states that peer review recommendations “remain advisory and are not ministerially ratified, routinely deferred to, or otherwise treated as de facto binding.” This directly dismantles the post-WWII system used by NIH, NSF, DOE, NASA, and nearly every science agency, in which independent expert peer review was the primary measure of scientific merit. Under this rule, a political appointee can simply override the scientific community’s judgment with no finding of cause.

3. “Gold Standard Science” as an Undefined Political Test (§200.205)

The rule repeatedly invokes a concept called “Gold Standard Science,” tied to Executive Order 14303 of May 23, 2025, without defining it in any concrete or measurable way. Under the proposed requirements:

• All grants must include benchmarks for compliance with “Gold Standard Science”

• Agencies must prioritize institutions that have “demonstrated success in implementing Gold Standard Science”

• Institutional prestige and historical reputation are explicitly deprioritized in favor of compliance with this undefined standard

Because the standard is never defined, the administration retains broad, unguided discretion to favor or disfavor institutions based on their political alignment.

4. Active Grants Can Be Terminated at Any Time, for Any Reason (§200.340)

The rule codifies and expands the authority to terminate active grants mid-award simply because they are “inconsistent with program goals or agency priorities.” Agencies need only provide a brief written rationale; no finding of noncompliance or fraud is required. This retroactively threatens ongoing multi-year research that researchers and institutions have built programs around.

OMB frames this as analogous to the “termination for convenience” clause used in federal contracts, but grants are fundamentally different instruments. Researchers take on staff, make commitments to participants, and design years-long projects around the presumption that a funded grant will run its course.

5. DEI, Gender Research, and Related Topics Banned as Grant Conditions (§200.300)

All federal award funds are prohibited from being used to “fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate” any of the following:

• DEI or DEIA policies or practices

• “Gender ideology,” defined as any theory that “denies the biological reality of sex or the sex binary”

• Any assistance with gender transition for individuals under 19

These restrictions are embedded as mandatory grant conditions across all agencies and all programs. A university or research institution that conducts such research, even with entirely separate, non-federal funds, could face grant termination if the activity is found to conflict with award conditions.

6. Broad Prohibition on International Scientific Collaboration (§200.220)

A new government-wide rule prohibits the use of any federal funds, including indirect costs, for bilateral or multilateral collaboration with “covered foreign countries” or entities affiliated with them. The rule extends beyond China to all countries designated under broad sanctions lists, and covers travel, research activities, technical assistance, and indirect costs allocable to any such collaboration.

While legitimate national security concerns exist with certain foreign entities, this provision is sweeping enough to severely disrupt international partnerships that have been foundational to U.S. leadership in fields from climate science and astrophysics to genomics and epidemiology.

7. “Domestic-First” Framework for Research Awards (§200.202(e))

A new domestic-first framework requires that any international element in a federally funded R&D grant be affirmatively justified on a case-by-case basis by agency officials. Foreign entities cannot receive R&D awards at all except with written approval from a senior political appointee. International collaboration, currently standard practice across many scientific disciplines, would become presumptively disfavored.

8. Applicants Can Be Denied Based on Organizational “Affiliations” (§200.206)

The risk factors agencies may use to deny a grant application are expanded to include an applicant’s membership in or affiliation with organizations that “advocate for the overthrow of the United States Government” or “undermine public safety or national security.” Given the preamble’s expansive framing of what constitutes anti-American activity, this language could be used to disqualify researchers affiliated with civil rights, environmental, or public health advocacy organizations.

9. E-Verify Mandated for All Grant Recipients (§200.303)

All recipients and subrecipients of federal awards must enroll in and use the DHS E-Verify system for every employee and contractor working on a federal award. Any Final Nonconfirmation must be reported to the federal agency. This adds significant administrative burden to universities and research institutions and could jeopardize grants at institutions employing researchers from abroad.

10. OMB Claims Direct Binding Authority Over All Agencies

The rule restructures 2 CFR to make OMB’s guidance a directly binding regulation on all agencies, effective government-wide on a single date. This removes the previous system under which individual agencies had meaningful flexibility in adopting OMB guidance. It also eliminates the ability of individual science agencies to shield their communities from any of these changes through their own implementing rules.

Conference Attendance and Related Costs

11. Conference Attendance Now Requires Express Agency Pre-Approval (§200.432)

Under current rules, conference attendance related to the scientific work of a grant is a standard, routine allowable cost. The proposed rule eliminates that presumption entirely. The new text states:

“The costs for attending conferences are allowable only if participation in the conference is expressly approved by the Federal agency and included in the terms and conditions of the Federal award.”

This means every conference a researcher wishes to attend using grant funds must be pre-approved by the agency and written into the award at the time it is made. Conferences not anticipated when the award was issued cannot easily be added later, and the agency has full discretion to deny approval or simply decline to include any conferences in the terms at all.

Conferences are where scientists present results, receive peer critique, discover new approaches, and build the collaborations that advance their fields. Giving political appointees gatekeeper authority over conference attendance is a direct tool for isolating researchers from their professional communities.

12. Professional Memberships Require Prior Approval and Must Be “Necessary” (§200.454)

The proposed rule makes three significant changes to allowable membership and subscription costs:

• Professional society memberships are only allowable if they are necessary to fulfill the award requirements and receive prior written agency approval

• Subscriptions to professional, academic, and technical journals are made categorically unallowable

• Memberships in organizations whose primary purpose is lobbying or issue advocacy are unallowable

The journal subscription ban deserves particular attention. Researchers routinely use grant funds to access the scientific literature that is foundational to their work. At institutions with constrained library budgets, this could make it genuinely difficult to conduct research.

13. Publication Costs and Open Access Fees Presumptively Unallowable (§200.461)

The rule proposes that all journal publication costs, including article processing charges, open access fees, and similar fees, are unallowable by default. Exceptions would require either a specific statutory mandate or case-by-case agency pre-approval. The proposed regulatory text reads:

“Publication costs (including page charges, article processing charges (APCs), or similar fees such as open access fees for professional journal publications and other peer-reviewed publications) are unallowable under Federal awards.”

This directly conflicts with longstanding federal open access mandates, including the 2022 OSTP memorandum requiring that federally funded research be made publicly available. Peer-reviewed publication is the mechanism by which science is validated and shared. Making it financially prohibitive for federally funded researchers to publish their findings would effectively suppress the scientific record.

14. Public Communications and Outreach Severely Restricted (§200.421)

All public relations costs are proposed as unallowable except those explicitly required by statute. This would restrict researchers from communicating findings to the public or press. Combined with the issue advocacy prohibition below, it adds another layer of control over how federally funded science reaches the public.

15. New “Issue Advocacy” Prohibition (§200.450)

Federal grant funds could not be used for:

• Any messaging that promotes or opposes a “particular social, political, or public policy position unrelated to the statutory objectives” of the award

• Voter registration activities

• Attempting to influence any state executive branch agency on matters outside the precise scope of the award

Given that the rule’s preamble characterizes climate science, public health research, and equity research as “divisive ideologies,” this prohibition could be deployed to bar researchers from speaking publicly about their own federally funded findings on politically sensitive subjects.
Notices of Funding Opportunities: New Restrictions and Controls

16. Program Goals Must “Align with Administration Policies and Priorities” (§200.202)

Every new federal grant program, including science programs, must now be designed with goals that explicitly align with administration policies and priorities. This requirement is embedded directly in the regulatory text governing program design, meaning science agencies must structure their grant solicitations around the current administration’s political agenda rather than solely around scientific need, statutory mandate, or the advice of the scientific community.

17. Agency Heads Can Exempt Grant Competitions from Public Notice (§200.204)

A new exception allows a federal agency head, or their designee, to approve an exemption from the requirement to publicly post a funding opportunity on Grants.gov when “publicly announcing an opportunity would pose a risk to national security or is in the national interest of the United States.” While narrow national security carve-outs for classified defense research are legitimate, this language is considerably broader. “National interest” is a phrase this administration has used expansively, and it could justify conducting entire grant competitions outside public view.

18. Agencies Can Restrict Eligibility to Specific Nonprofit Categories (§200.202(d))

Agencies can now explicitly restrict grant eligibility to specific IRS nonprofit categories, for example limiting eligibility to 501(c)(3) organizations while excluding 501(c)(4) organizations. This could be used to exclude advocacy-affiliated scientific organizations or civil society groups that conduct or fund research.

19. OMB Gains Direct Oversight of Which Institutions Receive Grants

A new provision allows OMB to require agencies to submit reports identifying the specific recipients of federal awards over any given period. Combined with OMB’s new authority to require political alignment in program design, this gives the White House direct oversight and leverage over which institutions receive federal research funding. That function has historically been insulated from political interference, and with good reason.

Bottom Line

Since World War II, the United States built the world’s preeminent scientific enterprise on a straightforward principle: federal dollars should fund the best science, as determined by independent experts rather than politicians. Peer review, open competition, and institutional autonomy were the pillars of that system. This proposed rule dismantles all three, simultaneously, government-wide, and binding on every federal agency by October 1, 2026.

What OMB is proposing is not a reform of grants management. It is a complete political control apparatus layered over every stage of the federal science funding lifecycle.

• Before a competition opens, every program must be designed to align with the President’s policy priorities, not scientific need, statutory mandate, or expert consensus.

• When opportunities are announced, agencies can restrict who is eligible, and the agency head can exempt solicitations from public posting under a broad national interest exception.

• When applications are reviewed, political appointees must personally evaluate every discretionary grant. Peer review is explicitly reduced to advisory status. Appointees are forbidden from deferring to scientific experts.

• When awards are made, grants can be conditioned on compliance with an undefined “Gold Standard Science” standard, and institutions can be disqualified based on their affiliations or the political character of their prior work.

• During the research itself, scientists cannot attend conferences, join professional societies, subscribe to journals, or publish in peer-reviewed journals without express agency pre-approval. Each of those approvals can simply be withheld.

• At any moment, an active grant, including a multi-year award already mid-project, can be terminated because a political appointee decides it no longer aligns with agency priorities. No finding of misconduct is required.

• When results are ready to share, publication costs are presumptively unallowable, and any public communication that could be labeled issue advocacy on a sensitive topic puts the entire award at risk.

The rule is also notable for what it cites as justification. The preamble relies heavily on Heritage Foundation reports, partisan Senate committee documents, and White House fact sheets, rather than independent scientific or administrative assessments. It characterizes decades of peer-reviewed research on climate, public health, equity, and international collaboration as “woke,” “neo-Marxist,” “anti-American,” or “divisive ideology.” It treats the scientific community’s professional infrastructure, including conferences, journals, international partnerships, and open access publishing, as wasteful overhead to be controlled or eliminated.

Congress has repeatedly appropriated funds for science agencies with the expectation that those funds would be administered through merit-based, expert-driven processes insulated from political interference. This rule attempts to override that expectation administratively, without new legislation, by repurposing OMB’s grants management authority as a vehicle for political control of science.

The public comment period closes approximately July 13, 2026 (45 days from May 29 publication). Comments must be submitted to regulations.gov, Docket OMB-2026-0034.

Scientists, universities, scientific societies, patient advocacy organizations, state governments, and members of the public all have standing to comment. Given the scope of what is proposed, the breadth and volume of opposition in the formal record will matter both legally and politically.

Why Policy Matters: Ally Flores’ Call for Accountability to the UT System Board of Regents, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. June 9, 2026

Why Policy Matters: Ally Flores’ Call for Accountability to the UT System Board of Regents, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D., June 10, 2026

I want to elevate the powerful letter to the editor by Ally Flores published onMay 29, 2026 in The Austin Chronicle, “Demand Accountability," also published below.

A recent graduate from the University of Texas at Austin, Flores names something deeply important: policy is never neutral. The rules that govern who gets to speak, when meetings are held, how testimony is controlled, and who has the authority to eliminate departments or terminate faculty all shape the democratic life of a public university.

Ally Flores

Her letter raises serious concerns about the UT System Board of Regents’ recent actions, especially the newly introduced rule granting university presidents sweeping authority to eliminate departments and terminate faculty while removing existing appeal processes and the requirement to provide a rationale. This is not merely an administrative change. It is a governance shift with profound implications for academic freedom, shared governance, faculty rights, and the future of ethnic and gender studies at UT Austin.

Policy matters because it is the machinery through which values become institutional reality. It can protect democratic participation, transparency, and academic freedom—or it can be used to silence, consolidate, and control. Ally Flores’ letter reminds us that accountability begins with paying attention to the rules, because the rules determine what is possible.

Her voice not only deserves to be heard, but heeded—especially by those entrusted with the stewardship of our public universities.

Demand Accountability
Ally Flores, Austin Chronicle | May 29, 2026

Dear Editor,

Last week, the UT System Regents met after the academic year ended, when many students and faculty were already out of town. Between no same-day sign-ups for testimony, timed remarks limited to the “chairmen’s discretion,” requiring pre-approval of speaking topics, and a phone line for speaker registration and questions that was disconnected the day before the meeting, public input felt, at best, discouraged. More concerning, buried in the 228-page agenda was a newly introduced rule granting university presidents unchecked authority to eliminate departments and terminate faculty, removing the existing appeal process and requirement to provide a rationale for these decisions.

It is difficult to accept these changes as anything but censorship when a fully Abbott-appointed board, including a former Republican state senator and members with explicit partisan ties, reliably advance any conservative measure placed before them. With UT-Austin moving to consolidate its ethnic and gender studies departments this fall, faculty remain in limbo about its impending implementation and whether newly grouped departments will be forced to compete for already-limited resources.

However, this selective austerity seems convenient. Tech moguls Michael and Susan Dell recently crossed $1 billion in lifetime giving to the university, and as AI has become a consistent subject of praise from President Jim Davis, this year’s decision to automate the simple task of reading graduate names at commencement signals not only a disregard for the human foundations of academia but a growing institutional malleability. I implore those reading to demand accountability before a leading public university surrenders what remains of its integrity to the outside pressures it has shown no willingness to resist.

Ally Flores

The Theology of Power Behind the Anti-DEI Movement: What Katherine Stewart, Nancy MacLean, and Jane Mayer Help Us See, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

The Theology of Power Behind the Anti-DEI Movement:
What Katherine Stewart, Nancy MacLean, and Jane Mayer Help Us See          

by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

June 10, 2026

Today's anti-DEI movement does not merely invoke the language of neutrality; it weaponizes it. Its appeals to “colorblind equality,” “individual responsibility,” “viewpoint diversity,” and “freedom from coercion” provide moral cover for a coordinated effort to dismantle the institutional commitments that make multiracial and multiethnic democracy possible.

A Manhattan Institute (2023) policy brief by Christopher Rufo, Ilya Shapiro, and Matt Beienburg makes this clear. The document calls for state legislatures to abolish DEI offices, end mandatory diversity training, prohibit diversity statements, and eliminate identity-conscious policies in public universities. It even supplies model legislative language for states to adopt. In other words, it does not merely criticize DEI. It operationalizes a political project.

What would Katherine Stewart, Nancy MacLean, and Jane Mayer help us see in this document and in the broader movement from which it emerges? At the risk of oversimplifying the work of these formidable researchers and thinkers—or failing to fully acknowledge the many conceptual overlaps among them—I offer the following reading. Each illuminates a different dimension of the same political project: Stewart helps us understand the religious-nationalist drive for power; MacLean reveals the anti-democratic political economy beneath it; and Mayer follows the money and institutional networks that make such ideas actionable.

Stewart, author of The Power Worshippers and Money, Lies, and God, would
likely urge us not to mistake this for a simple “culture war.” Christian nationalism, in her analysis, is not merely about religious belief. Nor is it reducible to debates over prayer, abortion, sexuality, or school curricula. It is a political movement seeking power over the institutions of democracy. Its aim is not pluralism, but control. From this perspective, attacks on DEI, Ethnic Studies, gender studies, and public education are not side issues. They are part of a larger attempt to define whose knowledge counts, whose histories matter, and whose presence in public institutions is legitimate.

Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains, would likely locate this effort within a longer history of anti-democratic political economy. Her work shows how radical-right, neoliberal thinkers and donors have sought to constrain majority rule, weaken public institutions, privatize public goods, and insulate concentrated wealth from democratic accountability. Seen through MacLean’s lens, anti-DEI legislation is not only a cultural backlash. It is also a governance strategy. It

narrows what public universities can do, what faculty can say, what students can learn, and what communities can demand of taxpayer-supported institutions.

Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money, would likely follow the money. She would ask: Who funds the think tanks, advocacy organizations, litigation networks, media campaigns, and policy shops that produce these “model bills”? Who benefits when public institutions are weakened? Who gains when democracy is recast as “coercion,” equity as “orthodoxy,” and civil rights as “preference”? 

Mayer’s work helps us see that ideas rarely move on their own. They are carried, amplified, and institutionalized through networks of wealth, influence, litigation, media, and policy advocacy. In higher education, this influence can become especially consequential when donor support comes with expectations—whether explicit or implicit—that shape curricula, research priorities, faculty appointments, or public-facing programs. When private wealth gains this kind of leverage over academic life, it does more than fund ideas; it helps determine which ideas become legitimate, visible, and powerful. The result is a serious threat to academic freedom, shared governance, and the integrity of universities as public-serving institutions.

Together, these three writers help us understand that the attack on DEI is not simply about administrative offices or training sessions. It is about the future of democracy itself.

John Oliver’s recent and timely Last Week Tonight segment on New College of Florida gives us a concrete glimpse of what this project looks like when theory becomes governance. New College was not merely criticized as “woke”; it was politically captured and remade through state power. 

Board appointments, administrative upheaval, the elimination of gender studies, numerous faculty departures, escalating costs, and an aggressive campaign to rebrand the institution all became part of a larger effort to transform a distinctive honors public liberal arts college into a showcase for ideological control. Put plainly, New College was not simply reformed; it was targeted. Its transformation should be understood as an intentional and orchestrated attack—one that other states, especially those already moving in this direction, should heed as a warning.

Oliver’s satire makes the story accessible, but the implications are grave: New College reveals how appeals to freedom, neutrality, and anti-indoctrination can become instruments for narrowing intellectual life and subordinating public education to political spectacle.

Link to John Oliver's show on New College

What happened at New College of Florida should therefore be read not as an isolated Florida story, but as a warning about a broader national strategy—one that has already taken legislative form in Texas through SB 17 and related efforts to discipline public higher education.

This is especially clear in higher education. Public universities are among the few institutions where young people can still encounter histories, literatures, theories, and communities that challenge inherited hierarchies. They are places where students learn that inequality is not natural, that democracy is unfinished, and that knowledge can serve justice. This is precisely why they have become targets.

The anti-DEI movement tells us that it seeks neutrality. But there is nothing neutral or apolitical about banning the vocabulary of race, gender, sexuality, colonialism, power, privilege, or structural inequality from public life. 

There is nothing neutral or apolitical about using state power to restrict how universities support historically excluded students. There is nothing neutral about turning “colorblindness” into a weapon against the very communities whose labor, taxes, cultures, and struggles built the state.

Nor is there anything Christian, in the deepest moral sense, about denying the dignity of the vulnerable, erasing histories of suffering and resistance, or consolidating power in the hands of the already powerful. The Christianity rooted in justice that many of us recognize speaks to humility, justice, love, mercy, and care for the stranger. Christian nationalism, by contrast, cloaks hierarchy in sacred authority. It baptizes domination. It transforms—and disfigures—a faith tradition into an instrument of political control.

This is why Stewart’s analysis matters. She helps us see how religious language can be marshaled to justify anti-democratic power. This is why MacLean’s analysis matters. She helps us see how democracy is weakened not always by dramatic coups, but by slow institutional redesign. And this is why Mayer’s analysis matters. She helps us see how concentrated wealth builds the infrastructure that makes these transformations possible.

The struggle over DEI, then, is not a narrow dispute over campus bureaucracy. It is a struggle over whether public institutions will continue to serve a multiracial democracy or whether they will be remade to protect hierarchy under the banner of freedom.

For those of us in Texas, this is not abstract. Under SB 17, we have seen how anti-DEI laws chill speech, restructure universities, eliminate offices, threaten programs, and place entire fields of study under suspicion. We have seen how Mexican American Studies, African and African Diaspora Studies, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and other knowledge traditions become vulnerable when political leaders decide that democracy itself has become too diverse, too demanding, and too honest.

The answer is not despair. It is clarity.

We should name the movement accurately. We should refuse the false innocence of its language. We should defend academic freedom, shared governance, Ethnic Studies, gender studies, civil rights, and public education as essential democratic goods. 

And we should insist that pluralism is not a threat to democracy. Pluralism is democracy.

The future being offered by Christian nationalism and its allied political networks is a narrowed one: fewer rights, fewer histories, fewer voices, fewer protections, fewer public goods. The future we must defend is broader, deeper, and more humane: a democracy capacious enough to tell the truth, educate all children, honor all communities, and build institutions worthy of the public trust.

That is the real choice before us.

Reference

Last Week Tonight. (2026, June 8). New College of Florida: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFMc07F1UUU

Manhattan Institute. (2023, January 18). New issue brief: Abolish DEI bureaucracies and restore colorblind equality in public universities [Press release]. https://manhattan.institute/article/new-issue-brief-abolish-dei-bureaucracies-and-restore-colorblind-equality-in-public-universities

MacLean, N. (2017). Democracy in chains: The deep history of the radical right’s stealth plan for America. Penguin Press.

Mayer, J. (2016). Dark money: The hidden history of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right. Anchor.

Stewart, K. (2020). The power worshippers: Inside the dangerous rise of religious nationalism. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Stewart, K. (2025). Money, lies, and God: Inside the movement to destroy American democracy. Bloomsbury Publishing.

John Oliver Takes Aim at New College of Florida

John Oliver’s segment on New College of Florida is both hilarious and devastating because it captures, with painful clarity, what happens when higher education becomes a staging ground for ideological conquest. What has unfolded there is not reform, but a political takeover that has driven away faculty, destabilized students, dismantled programs, and turned a once-distinctive public honors college into a warning for the nation. The lesson is clear for us here in Texas and beyond: when political power is used to control universities, the result is not educational improvement, but the erosion of academic freedom, institutional integrity, and student well-being.

-Angela Valenzuela

John Oliver Takes Aim at New College of Florida
“It’s not going great,” the late-night host said of the political takeover and institutional upheaval that have transformed New College’s campus since 2023.

By Kendall Southworth June 8, 2026

John Oliver turned his satirical lens on New College of Florida in a blistering 28-minute segment on Sunday, June 7. Image: Courtesy HBO

If you happened to be scrolling through channels late Sunday night, you might have stumbled across an unexpected but familiar sight: the bayfront views of the original winter home of circus magnate Charles Ringling—now known as College Hall, the academic and administrative building of New College of Florida. For the last several years, the tiny Sarasota enclave has occupied a persistent, polarizing place in headlines big and small—and on Sunday night, that long-running conflict landed onto one of television’s biggest stages.

In a blistering 28-minute segment on Last Week Tonight, host John Oliver turned his satirical lens toward the local liberal arts college that became ground zero for the conservative movement’s efforts to reshape higher education. Backed by months of research and interviews with current and former students, faculty and alumni—including the independent alumni organization Novo Collegian Alliance—the segment traced the political takeover and institutional upheaval that have transformed the campus since 2023.

For former and current New College students who have borne close witness to watching what Oliver called a “political theater” reshape where they live and learn, seeing the story broadcast to millions across platforms felt surreal.

“We’ve watched this destruction of a great educational program for the last three and a half years. Seeing it brought to national attention is both hard to see but also cathartic,” says Brian Cody, secretary of the Novo Collegian Alliance. “Seeing his face next to the null set [the college’s beloved former mascot, which Oliver described as ‘the single dorkiest thing’ he had ever heard] is just crazy.”

Oliver opened the segment by introducing viewers to the New College generations of Sarasotans have known since the ’60s: a small public honors college known for attracting unusually intellectual students, self-directed study and narrative evaluations instead of traditional grades and a reputation for attracting unusually intellectual students—or, as Oliver affectionately put it, being “a rare haven for gentle nerds.” He highlighted the school’s academic track record, including a 2018 report showing that 80 percent of graduates attended graduate school within five years and that New College ranked third nationally among public and private institutions for producing graduates who go on to earn doctoral degrees.

Oliver then revisited Gov. Ron DeSantis’ early 2023 appointment of six conservative allies to the college’s board of trustees. He described the takeover not merely as an effort to “recapture an institution,” but to “provide a model for red states to then replicate.”

That national ambition was openly shared by conservative activist Christopher Rufo, one of the newly appointed trustees. At the time of his appointment, Oliver pointed out, Rufo tweeted, “We are now over the wall and ready to transform higher education from within.” He doubled down on this language later in his foreword to Storming the Ivory Tower, a book written by New College president and former Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran. In it, Rufo praised Corcoran for implementing “the vision of Governor Ron DeSantis,” adding: “He fought the press—and won. Florida has become the blueprint for red-state governance.”

Much of the segment focused on those efforts by Corcoran. Oliver highlighted what he framed as a tension between promises of restored academic rigor and the realities of the college’s recent trajectory. He pointed to faculty departures, Corcoran’s nearly $700,000 annual salary (the highest per-student compensation of any public university president in Florida, with perks and bonuses pushing total compensation above $1 million), and the dismantling of longstanding programs and campus traditions.

He also highlighted a series of controversial hires, including vice provost David Rancourt, a former lobbyist with no prior experience in higher education. Oliver claimed that “the most noteworthy thing” Rancourt had done since his appointment was participate in a stand-up comedy night in which he described an incident from childhood in which he exposed his genitalia to a child the same age, referring to her as a “little b—-.” Ironically, Oliver also pointed to former communications director Fred Piccolo to make his point, whose tenure ended after multiple charges of indecent exposure became public.

The segment also examined one of the administration’s most frequently cited achievements: enrollment growth.

While incoming classes have increased since the takeover, Oliver argued that the gains come with important caveats. He cited reports from former admissions employees who alleged that academic standards had been lowered, and he spent several minutes on the college’s expanded recruitment of athletes, including roughly 70 baseball players the first year, when there were no athletic facilities. He also noted reporting that student-athletes have received a disproportionately large share of merit-based scholarships despite, on average, holding weaker academic credentials than other applicants.

For Cody, it was affirming to see these points surface on a national stage, but he noted there is even more to the story, saying that “they keep bringing in these big classes, but last year they only grew by 22 students compared to the year prior. They’re coming in to play sports but are leaving after a year or two. They’re wasting money recruiting people, but not keeping them.”

Oliver scrutinized the financial implications of the changes, citing a state audit that found New College’s public cost per degree had risen to nearly $500,000—far higher than other institutions in Florida’s university system. Cody added that, in the wake of a recent move by lawmakers to slash the college’s operating budget by 40 percent, the consequences of that spending trajectory may soon become more acute.

A state audit found New College’s public cost per degree had risen to nearly $500,000—far higher than other institutions in Florida’s university system.

Image: Courtesy Florida State University Efficiency Study

Throughout the piece, Oliver argued that New College had become a vehicle for political performance rather than educational reform, a view echoed by one current student who described the changes as disorienting and personal. “It feels like New College has become a political playground for what these people want the country to be,” she said. “I’m upset—this is my education.” Another student in his final year described being moved out of his campus housing by administration to make room for incoming athletes.

 “Depressingly,” said Oliver in closing, “this is the exact sort of smash-and-grab we’re seeing in so many places right now, from public health to newspapers to broadcast news. Ideologues capture something they dislike, claim they want to fix it, and then proceed to dismantle it. But seldom has that been more blatant than watching people talk about great debates and classical education, only to drive away faculty, dismiss books as trash, and assemble a veritable Avengers of D-list conservatives, celebrities, creeps and weirdos—all so they can lecture the world’s single largest baseball team.”

Corcoran didn’t reply to a request for a phone interview but released a statement to Sarasota Magazine, referencing “record enrollment growth, rising academic achievement, significant philanthropic investment, historic growth in foundation support and endowment assets, [and] the recruitment of exceptional faculty.” Despite the show’s focus on campus upheaval, Corcoran maintained that the administration’s efforts have ultimately resulted in “a strengthened campus culture rooted in intellectual freedom, civil discourse, and academic freedom.” He added that the college had repeatedly invited John Oliver to visit campus, meet with students and faculty, film on site or participate in an open conversation on its Socratic Stage, noting that the invitation “was declined” but “remains open.”

 William Rosenberg—president of the Novo Collegian Alliance—on the other hand, praised the segment, saying, “John Oliver has a rare gift for making people laugh without letting them look away.” He added that while as humorous as the segment may have been, “what is happening at New College is no laughing matter for the students, faculty and staff living through it every day.”

To watch Last Week Tonight’s segment on New College of Florida, click here. 

Public Schools Are on the Ballot: Why Gina Hinojosa’s Campaign Matters, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. June 8, 2026

Public Schools Are on the Ballot: Why Gina Hinojosa’s Campaign Matters

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

June 8, 2026

Today’s news about Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa’s
launch of “Team Texas Public Schools” could not come at a more urgent moment. Across Texas, school communities are being forc
ed to confront an unthinkable reality: neighborhood schools—beloved places where generations of children have learned, played, been fed, been loved, and been known—are being closed, consolidated, and destabilized.

Emilio, Gina, & me

It was an honor to stand with Gina today at the press conference she held at Pease Elementary this morning. CBS Austin below recorded the event so that you can view it, at least in part.

Here in Austin, the pain is immediate. Ten schools are closing. Families are grieving not simply the loss of buildings, but the loss of community, continuity, trust, and belonging. Anyone who has ever walked the halls of a neighborhood public school knows that a school is never just a school. It is where children learn their own worth. It is where teachers become lifelines. It is where parents build relationships. It is where democracy begins, one classroom, one child, one family at a time.

That is why Hinojosa’s words today matter: “It is not just you.” Austin families are not alone. This is happening across Texas. It is happening in communities large and small, urban and rural, Black, Brown, white, immigrant, working-class, and middle-class. It is happening because our public schools have been pushed to the brink by policy choices—choices that have starved districts, demoralized educators, politicized curriculum, over-tested children, and opened the door to privatization.

Let us be clear: school closures are not natural disasters. They are political outcomes.

For years, Texas leaders have told us that there is no money for public schools while finding money for vouchers, border militarization, tax giveaways, political theater, and the steady expansion of private interests into the public sphere. They have manufactured crisis and then offered privatization as the cure. 

They have treated our children’s schools as though they were expendable, especially when those schools serve communities of color, working families, emergent bilingual students, students with disabilities, and children whose parents lack the political power of wealthy donors.

This is why the fight for public education is inseparable from the fight for democracy.

Public schools are one of the last great public institutions where we still gather across difference. They belong to all of us. They are funded by all of us. They serve the common good. When they are weakened, the entire civic fabric weakens. When they are closed, communities lose anchors. When public dollars are diverted to private schools, the children left behind are our children, our neighbors, our students, our future.

Gina Hinojosa’s campaign speaks directly to this crisis because her own public life began in the struggle to save a neighborhood school. As a former Austin ISD trustee, a state legislator, a mother, and a longtime defender of public education, she understands that schools are not line items on a spreadsheet. They are living institutions. They carry history, memory, culture, language, and hope.

Her critique of vouchers as a scam resonates because vouchers do not create real choice for most families. They subsidize private options for some while draining resources from the public schools that educate the overwhelming majority of Texas children. 

They do not guarantee transportation. 

They do not guarantee admission. 

They do not guarantee services for children with disabilities. 

They do not guarantee accountability. 

What they do guarantee is that public money will flow away from public institutions at the very moment those institutions are being told to do more with less.

And the A–F accountability system, as Hinojosa rightly notes, has become part of this machinery. A state agency can design the test, control the rating system, shift the rules, and then declare schools “failing”—often without acknowledging the structural underfunding, poverty, language inequities, and policy instability that shape school outcomes. This is not accountability in any meaningful democratic sense. It is a system that too often punishes the very communities that deserve the most investment.

This is why voting matters.

We cannot mourn school closures and then stay home on Election Day. We cannot say we love teachers and then fail to defend them at the ballot box. We cannot lament what is happening to our children’s schools while allowing the same political leadership to continue dismantling them.

Getting out the vote is not a slogan. It is a responsibility. It means checking our registration, having a voting plan. It means helping our students, families, neighbors, elders, and young people understand what is at stake. It means offering rides, making calls, knocking on doors, sharing information, and refusing cynicism. It means remembering that democracy is not something we possess once and for all; it is something we practice, protect, and renew.

Texas is not a lost cause. Texas is a living struggle. And we are worthy foes against the oligarchs.

Every school closure meeting, every parent testimony, every teacher who stays late, every student who speaks up, every community member who refuses to accept austerity as destiny—these are signs that people still believe in the public good. They still believe that our children deserve better. They still believe that a multiracial, multilingual, working-family Texas has the right to govern itself.

This election must be about more than personalities. It must be about whether Texas will continue down the road of privatization, underfunding, censorship, and manufactured crisis—or whether we will choose a future rooted in public schools, public accountability, and public care.

Our children are watching. Our teachers are exhausted. Our families are hurting. Our communities are organizing.

Now we must vote like our schools depend on it—because they do.

Hinojosa launches program to fight Texas school closures, citing public school crisis

by Jahmal Kennedy | Mon, June 8, 2026 at 5:08 PM CBS Austin



Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa in Austin Monday, June 8, 2026.

As school districts across Texas, including Austin ISD, face budget crises and the threat of campus closures, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa is launching a new effort she says is aimed at helping communities fight back.

Hinojosa said Texas public schools are in dire condition.

“I will tell you that our public schools are on life support right now,” she said.

ALSO "It hurts": Austin ISD families look to keep community alive on final day for 10 campuses

Hinojosa announced a nonpartisan organizing program called Team Texas Public Schools. The program is designed to train parents, teachers and administrators to fight school closures in communities “getting hit the hardest.”

“Ten schools in this city alone in the school district are shutting down, but it is happening all over this state,” Hinojosa said.

Asked about Austin ISD’s budget process and closures, Hinojosa said, “WhatI think is important for the people of Austin to understand as they are in the trenches fighting this fight is that it is not just you.”

She also blamed Gov. Greg Abbott for the situation, saying, “And it is important for supporters of our public schools for parents and teachers to understand that Greg Abbott meant for this to happen.”

Abbott, Hinojosa’s November opponent, has focused his K-12 agenda on school vouchers in recent years. In February, Abbott celebrated what his office called “record-breaking school choice demand” after more than 100,000 families applied for vouchers.

Abbott said of vouchers: “Through this program, families will receive funds to send their children to a school that is the best fit for them.”

However, University of Texas at Austin professor Jennifer Keys Adair studies elementary and early childhood education, and says, "vouchers are definitely diverting funds from public neighborhood elementary schools."

She also added, "it seems like in this voucher conversation, oh, it will allow all families to be able to choose where they go to school. But we know that that's not what's happening," said Adair. She added more affluent families are more likely to get a voucher and said, "So in that case, you're furthering the kind of pressure on teachers and we're furthering the like lack of resources that we're offering to children who need it most."

Hinojosa said she opposes that approach.

“I don't believe in public school vouchers,” she said. Hinojosa even called it a "scam."

Austin ISD parent and former district principal Claudia Kramer Santamaria said she believes Hinojosa is the right advocate for Texas public schools.

“We understand as former principal and teacher that we needed to really have an advocate and I think that's what failed,” Santamaria said.

Hinojosa also criticized Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath for what she called a “rigged” A-F report card system, saying Morath gets to "make the [STAAR] test, rate the test, look at results, and then decide who fails and who passes," and added "And he rigs it to make it show what he wants it to show. And he wants it to show that our Texas public schools aren't strong. And he wants it to show that privatization is a better option."

Hinojosa said that if she becomes governor she would replace Morath.

UT should restore Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, Opinion-Editorial, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. & Emilio Zamora, Ph.D.

Friends,

I welcome you to read the op-ed that Emilio Zamora and I co-authored, published today in the Austin American-Statesman. We are grateful to the editors for publishing it and for helping bring public attention to the importance of restoring Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at UT Austin.

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

UT should restore Mexican American and Latina/o Studies

By Angela Valenzuela and Emilio Zamora,Guest columnists
June 4, 2026 Austin American-Statesman

Mexican American and Latina/o Studies helps students understand the people, history and culture that shape Texas. UT should restore it, professors Angela Valenzuela and Emilio Zamora write.

Aaron Martinez/American-Statesman 

Concerns about the University of Texas’ commitment to a broad and inclusive education have grown since the dismantling of diversity, equity and inclusion programs on the Austin campus. Those concerns deepened recently when the College of Liberal Arts consolidated four important departments— African and African Diaspora Studies, American Studies,Mexican American and Latina/o Studies (MALS), and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies — into a new Department of Social and Cultural Analysis.

The decisionraises important questions about the university’s intentions, its academic mission, its contractual obligations to faculty members, staff and students, and whether administrators followed the review process such a significant restructuring requires.

The new Department of Social and Cultural Analysis is now responsible for administering four fully developed academic programs with hundreds of faculty members, staff and students, each grounded in their distinct histories, scholarly traditions and educational goals. That arrangement is not a viable proposition, given the scale of the undertaking and the difficulty of administering a bloated department. Whether its officials anticipate it or not, a perverse incentive exists to pare down the new department to more manageable proportions, thereby diminishing the intellectual and curricular integrity of the fields serving students across the university.

Universities exist not merely to transmit established knowledge but alsoto generate new knowledge, cultivate critical inquiry and help students understand the full complexity of the societies in which they live. As one of the state’s two flagship public universities, UT Austin bears a special responsibility to prepare students for leadership in an increasingly diverse state and nation.

Programs such as MALS help students understand the histories, cultures, labor, civic contributions and lived experiences that have shaped Texas for generations. Weakening fields dedicated to such study risks narrowing, rather than expanding, students' understanding of the state they will inherit and help lead.

Major restructuring like what has occurred at UT allows a university to bypass standard personnel and budgetary rules governing employment and funding arrangements. Faculty, staff and students in the affected departments have been left feeling deeply insecure. Theirs is an uncertain future at the university.

Equally troubling are questions about the process that led to the decision. University officials know the importance of consulting faculty, students, staff, alumni and community partners when making decisions of this magnitude. Yet consolidation was not fully explained to the public or to key stakeholders. Nor was it accompanied by a statement of anticipated impact.

The review committee appointed by university officials to explore the possibility of restructuring the College of Liberal Arts did not include faculty representation either from MALS or Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies. Also, the university has not solicited feedback or encouraged a public dialogue on such an important issue.
The Latino Coalition for Excellence in Higher Education, a statewide advocacy organization, has made formal requests to meet with UT President James Davis and discuss its concerns. He has not responded in three months.

Universities make difficult decisions all the time. But those decisions should be guided by sound educational policy, transparency and meaningful consultation with the communities they affect. In this case, the university has fallen short.

The consolidation sends an unsettling message that the study of Mexican history, labor, culture, civic life, and thought matters less today than during the last 50 years. Advocates of the other affected fields have been equally perplexed by the university’s undue actions.

UT Austin should restore MALS as an independent department. The university's responsibility is not to marginalize fields that help Texans understand themselves, but to ensure their continued strength and vitality for generations to come.

Angela Valenzuela is a professor of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Texas. Emilio Zamora is a professor emeritus in history at the University of Texas.