Overhaul the DOJ grant application process with stricter vetting

Research notes

The government-wide proposed rule rewriting 2 CFR part 200 (Federal Register 2026-10817, 2026-05-29) is an Office of Management and Budget rulemaking that the Justice Department joins along with every other agency; it is not a Justice Department overhaul and is recorded here as context only.

• EO 14332 grant-process sweep (2026-09-29). The object matches: the grant application process is the agency’s grant-decision process, and EO 14332 §3(a)(iv) orders review of funding announcements and forms. The item is already partial on the sanctuary memorandum of 2025-02-05, so the order is a note. OJP’s 2026 solicitations add more pieces of the same kind. Applicants seeking priority consideration answer an Agency Funding Priorities Inventory, and the NOFOs put out of scope activity that violates immigration or civil-rights law (NIJ NOFOs O-NIJ-2025-172572 and O-NIJ-2026-172659). The OJP General Conditions carry a DEI civil-rights certification (FY2025 edition, 2025-05-12). None is the overhaul of the application process itself, so the rung stays. Two suits against DOJ grant conditions were found in CourtListener. In Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence v. Bondi (D.R.I. 1:25-cv-00279), the memorandum and order of 2025-08-08 (read) grants a 5 U.S.C. 705 stay “of the challenged conditions on all FY 2025 grants” of the Office on Violence Against Women, meaning its NOFOs’ out-of-scope conditions. New Jersey v. DOJ (D.R.I. 1:25-cv-00404), on Victims of Crime Act conditions, is at the amended-complaint stage. Under the rule, a stay of one office’s NOFO conditions does not block a department-wide policy, and this item’s rung does not rest on those conditions. Status unchanged.