Amid the Trump administration's ongoing efforts to wrest the power of the purse from Congress, an estimated $15 billion allotted by lawmakers to fund life-saving biomedical research via the National Institutes of Health was temporarily frozen and then said to be released Tuesday.
According to reporting by The Wall Street Journal, the initial decision to withhold the funding came from Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget for the Trump administration and Project 2025 co-author. Vought has expansive views of presidential power, the Journal noted, and has said the NIH needs "fundamental reform."
In an interview with CBS news over the weekend, Vought defended already holding up billions in congressionally allocated funding for research on things like cancer and cardiovascular disease by claiming that the NIH has been "weaponized against the American people." He made the comments after 14 Republican Senators sent him a letter imploring that he release congressionally appropriated funding, including money marked for the NIH.
In June, The Washington Post reported that members of the Trump administration, including Vought, are aiming to challenge and undermine a 1974 budget law, known as the Impoundment Act, that prevents the president from unilaterally overturning spending decisions made by Congress. The Post reported that the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office has issued two rulings that funds have been illegally withheld already by the Trump administration and that the true scale of the illegal withholdings remains unclear.
“Irreparable harm”
In this context, NIH leaders received a four-sentence memo Tuesday afternoon telling them of a pause of all NIH grant research funding, which largely funds critical biomedical research at universities, academic medical centers, and other independent research institutions in the US, according to reporting by Stat. Among the countless advances attributed to NIH funding, researchers credit it for the 30-percent decline in US cancer deaths since 1990.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed the funding pause to journalists. US Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.), vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, estimated that the amount of funding being frozen was roughly $15 billion.
But, later Tuesday, amid uproar around the funding freeze, the decision was reportedly reversed. The Wall Street Journal reported that the reversal occurred after senior White House officials intervened.
On social media, the communications director for the OMB said that funding was merely "undergoing a programmatic review while we were waiting for more information from NIH and is being released." But Sen. Murray noted that the OMB did not provide any evidence that the funds are being released.
In a statement, Murray lamented the damage the Trump administration has already done to the scientific and medical community, including already holding up $5 billion in funding while "lying about waste, fraud, and abuse" at the NIH. She accused Trump and Vought of working to "decimate lifesaving research in this country."
“We can’t immediately undo the massive brain drain, the shuttered clinical trials, and the damage this administration is causing," she said. "Medical miracles don’t happen overnight, and you can’t turn lifesaving research on and off at the drop of a dime. This administration is doing irreparable harm to our efforts to cure cancer, Alzheimer’s, and so much more. But this administration can—and must—stem the bleeding by ending its attacks on medical research and getting this funding out the door."
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