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NSF is Quietly Trying to Rewrite the Rules of American Science.

#NSF rewrote its entire grants rulebook to conform to OMB's proposed rules (NSF-2026-OTR-0001). Same political-termination powers, same international-collaboration crackdown, plus more NSF added on its own. ‼️Comments close Aug 24. Breakdown + how to comment: solarshea.substack.com/p/nsf-is-qui... 🧵

solarshea.substack.com

Here's What's in the Proposed Rules, and Guidance on Submitting a Substantive Public Comment.

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Separate from the regulations.gov comment (which has the Aug 24 deadline), @aas.org is also tracking this and has a tool for contacting your members of Congress directly — no deadline on that one, but worth doing alongside the comment: aas.org/posts/news/2... 🧵

regulations.gov

Regulations.gov

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NSF mandates immediate open access, disallows grant funds to pay for it

One of the stranger findings: NSF's own summary says publication costs are disallowed, but the actual rule text still permits them. R&D World independently caught the same contradiction: www.rdworldonline.com/nsf-mandates... 🧵

rdworldonline.com

The NSF's draft policy requires researchers to publish open access immediately and proposes to eliminate the grant funding that pays for it.

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fight2win.standupforscience.net

Want to comment but don't know where to start? @standupforscience.net built a comment tool for this (same team behind the OMB one): fight2win.standupforscience.net 🧵

Stand up for Science

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NSF is Quietly Trying to Rewrite the Rules of American Science.

solarshea.substack.com

Here's What's in the Proposed Rules, and Guidance on Submitting a Substantive Public Comment.

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Shea (she/her) @solarshea.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Some good news: I just heard from one heliophysics proposal team that was successful in SciAct.

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Shea (she/her) @solarshea.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

#heliophysics folks - I'm hearing that some O2R2O (ROSES-25 B.4) selections have been made. Time to check your NSPIRES. I haven't heard anything about RADIANT (ROSES-25 B.5) so far, but I'm not sure who's submitted to that to find out.

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Shea (she/her) @solarshea.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

#heliophysics folks, if you got through Step-1, the ROSES-25 B.2 HFR Step-2 deadline is Sept 25.

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Has planetary seen any funds out of ROSES-25 so far? Helio has had submissions but no selections, let alone funding release, as far as I know.

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NOTE: This pertains to the *release* of ROSES-26, not the funding to come from it. A 1-year delay from any ROSES release to the first awards being made is relatively common. As far as I'm aware, no funds have been released yet from ROSES-25 for #Heliophysics. Unsure about other divisions. 🧵[7/7]

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‼️Based on all of this, I (personally) wouldn't expect #NASA ROSES-26 before November, if then. Worth consideration for strategic planning. I hope I'm proven wrong. 🧵[6/7]

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Sources describe HQ as being in "chaos" right now. My read: SMD HQ isn't refusing to answer our questions of when ROSES-26 will be released -- no one at *can* answer that question. It seems to be above them, waiting for sign-off. The release is out of their hands. 🧵[5/7]

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New ROSES-25 solicitations keep opening in Earth Sci (A) with fall due dates, not something you'd expect if ROSES-26 were about to drop. Normally, submission deadlines can still happen after the next ROSES comes out. But new solicitations are not opened months before the next year's program. 🧵[4/7]

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The current ROSES-25 Table 3 has footnotes pointing to Nov or Dec2026 as the point by which ROSES-26 is expected to be open. It's ambiguous enough that I can't say for certain whether that's NASA's actual best guess or just an admin cutoff, but no one is currently pointing to July/Aug/Sep. 🧵[3/7]

Screenshot of ROSES-2025 Table 3 footnotes 3 and 5, showing anticipated ROSES-26 open dates of December 31 and November 12, 2026 respectively.

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📌 #NASA ROSES-25 came out July 10, 2025. It's now July 21, 2026, over a year later, with no ROSES-26 in sight, despite NASA saying in January it would release in July again this year. 🧵[2/7]

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The following is all my interpretation, but I think the writing's on the wall for #NASA ROSES-26. It's a reasonable read given the evidence. It's at least useful to consider for planning purposes. 🧵[1/7] @roguenasa.altgov.info @agu.org @aas.org @planetarysociety.bsky.social @nationalacademies.org

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(Also noting this number might continue to increase! The comment period is closed but they had a huge backlog in the system so the total number of comments may not be counted yet!) 🧵

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Supposedly OMB wants to implement the rule by the start of October..... with almost half a million comments to respond to, good luck with that 🙃😁🤩 🧵

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I was already galvanized, but this adds a heap of hope to the ingredients. Thank you to everyone who commented and to everyone who spread the word to help motivate others to comment. This is what people-power looks like. 😍🎉💛💪 🧵

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