Comment on FR Doc # 2026-12725 from Allison Richardson

I am strongly opposed to the changes submitted in the Proposal and Award Polcies and Procedures Guide. After OMB received thousands of comments opposing the regulation for federal financial assistance rule, these proposed changes seem to essentially do the same through a back door. It attacks the NSF grant process reducing the opportunity to innovate by limiting the topics that could be researched, and where one could go to do that research. Earthquakes do not just take place in the US. By restricting international collaboration, you could cut off research to see what kinds of buildings best hold up to earthquakes around the world or limit the ability to fight outbreaks of disease like Ebola, or collaborate with top scientists in the field with very specific expertise. By putting decision making in the hands of political appointees with no real scientific knowledge, their is no true standard by which grants may be approved, including the importance of peer review. It would erode the credibility of science studies in the US as compared to the rest of the world and make us less competitive in the global economy. I personally benefited from an NSF research experience for undergraduates grant 29 years ago. It gave me field experience and allowed me to spend 7 weeks in Wyoming, a place I had never been in order to collect fossils from the Eocene period when mammals started to to become more dominant. This experience provided me the ability to continue into grad school my geology studnies and later provided me with experiences I could share with my own students to bring Earth Science alive with real data in our classroom. But under these rules today, such a grant would probably not even be funded. These science attacks must end. It will only weaken our country on a global stage