On Friday, The Washington Post reported on a contentious White House meeting in which the director of the National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya, tried to fend off yet another effort to place funding decisions under political control.
The NIH is the largest funder of biomedical research on the planet, and its $47 billion budget is larger than that of the next 10 research funders combined.
At once after Trump re-entered the Oval Office, the agency ended a broad range of grants on topics like pandemic preparedness and health disparities and proposed a budget that would shrink the NIH by nearly half.
According to the Politico report, he leveraged one of Trump’s weaknesses: a desire to harm Harvard University.
In the absence of a system for shifting the funding to other grants, though, this runs the risk of leaving the NIH unable to spend all the money Congress allocates to it.
5 sentences from our version of the report,
chosen to cover it. Nothing here is written; every line is in the article below.
How
Summarized version
When news reports said Harvard had agreed to a settlement without a payoff, Trump immediately demanded $1 billion from Harvard as part of any settlement. In the absence of a system for shifting the funding to other grants, though, this runs the risk of leaving the NIH unable to spend all the money Congress allocates to it.
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The article, shortened and in plain language
On Friday, The Washington Post reported on a contentious White House meeting in which the director of the National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya, tried to fend off yet another effort to place funding decisions under political control. The Post said that Bhattacharya ended up on the losing side of the fight.
The NIH is the largest funder of biomedical research on the planet, and its $47 billion budget is larger than that of the next 10 research funders combined. Its funding, distributed through grants to academic researchers at universities, supports everything from basic biological research to clinical trials and has helped the biotechnology industry flourish.
At once after Trump re-entered the Oval Office, the agency ended a broad range of grants on topics like pandemic preparedness and health disparities and proposed a budget that would shrink the NIH by nearly half.
Dissatisfied with blocking funding for entire fields of research and frustrated by Congress, Vought decided to have another go at the NIH’s grants. According to the Politico report, he leveraged one of Trump’s weaknesses: a desire to harm Harvard University. Early in his second term, Trump suspended all grant funding to some universities, seeking large payments from them in exchange for restoring the funding and dropping investigations.
In the White House meeting, Vought reportedly presented OMB control of NIH grants as an alternate means of targeting Harvard.
In the absence of a system for shifting the funding to other grants, though, this runs the risk of leaving the NIH unable to spend all the money Congress allocates to it.
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