alt Hacker NewsIt's different because it explicitly prohibits deferring to peer reviewers and explicitly requires that grants must "advance the President's policy priorities". Previous restrictions were guiderails for or additional screens on top of the underlying merit-based review; now the merit-based review is secondary and the primary criterion is whether the President's minions like the proposal.
How did the merit-based review regularly let things like these through? (Picked by scrolling at random through a list of cancelled grants):
$2.4 million for "Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility) Girls in a Robotics Leadership Project"
$1.2 million for "FW-HTF-R: Collaborative Research: Virtual Meeting Support for Enhanced Well-Being and Equity for Game Developers"
$700k for "CAREER: Advancing Equity in Middle School Mathematics by Engaging Students and Families of Color in Participatory Design Research"
Etc., etc., etc.