The White House Wasn’t Involved. Except for the List.

The White House has offered a useful clarification of what its science adviser meant by “the White House”: not necessarily the White House. Please consult the organizational chart before relying on the sentence.

FedScoop reported October 26 on National Science Foundation records obtained by Democracy Forward. One message, sent through DOGE affiliate Zachary Terrell’s NSF account on May 19, 2025, says: “WH just sent me a list of misinformation related grants that should be terminated.” He added that he thought these grants had not yet been terminated. This was rather specific paperwork for an institution whose involvement would later require such careful explanation.

The message appears in NSF’s final FOIA release of August 12, 2026. The list is redacted. The recipient is not identifiable, and the message does not identify the White House sender. It documents Terrell’s account of a cancellation request, not proof that every listed grant was canceled. NSF’s accompanying letter explicitly says some withheld lists were nonfinal and underwent further deliberation before decisions. A proposed termination list is not a receipt.

At a July 22 House hearing, science adviser Michael Kratsios told Representative Zoe Lofgren that the White House was not involved in deciding which NSF proposals received funding. He described his Office of Science and Technology Policy’s role as ensuring presidential priorities appeared in agency budgets. Later, pressed by Representative George Whitesides, he specifically denied OSTP involvement in individual grant decisions.

That distinction deserves room on the page. A White House spokesperson told FedScoop that Kratsios was speaking for OSTP, the office he represented. Approving new proposals is also different from terminating existing awards. The May 2025 message and July 2026 testimony concern different moments and differently framed decisions. These records do not establish perjury, or that Kratsios personally ordered any cancellation. The administration has a narrower defense than its broadest sentence suggested.

The spokesperson also defended DOGE’s work as retrospective, one-time grant guidance implementing President Trump’s anti-DEI order. That January 20, 2025 directive did call for terminating equity-related grants, “to the maximum extent allowed by law.” An administration can set policy priorities without every resulting decision being an illicit conspiracy. It can also explain who supplied a particular list, which authority they used, and how NSF evaluated it. An executive order is not a substitute for those answers. Nor does it establish that every misinformation grant on the redacted list fell within it.

For researchers whose funding is under review, the difference between an application and an existing award matters enormously. The difference between one White House office and another should not make accountability impossible. Congress should not need a follow-up hearing just to determine the geographic limits of a witness’s nouns.

The released message leaves plenty unknown. It also leaves something quite legible: an NSF account saying the White House had sent grants to terminate. The administration’s answer is that its science adviser meant a smaller part of the building. Fine. Then identify the part that sent the list.