Press Releases

Today, Representatives Suzan DelBene (WA-01), Jamie Raskin (MD-08), and Lori Trahan (MA-03), along with 122 of their colleagues, demanded that the Trump administration stop injecting its MAGA agenda into the traditionally nonpartisan federal grantmaking process. In a letter to White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought, the lawmakers demonstrated how the administration’s proposed changes will impede critical health research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Since the end of World War II, NIH has relied on qualified experts to determine which health care research puts Americans’ tax dollars to best use. This thorough, nonpolitical process has set the global standard for high-quality grant review and propelled U.S. institutions like the NIH and its grantees to the forefront of scientific innovation, discovery, and research.

A proposed policy change from OMB will give partisan political appointees final say over grant decisions. Undoing the peer review process in favor of political grantmaking will delay and disrupt health care research that millions of Americans depend on.

“We write in opposition to the Office of Management and Budget’s disastrous and likely unlawful proposed rule that would devastate American health care innovation for generations,” the lawmakers wrote. “This alarming change would convert our venerable grant review process into a political obstacle course and insider’s game, irreparably damaging our nation’s leading health research institutions, including the National Institutes of Health and its grantees across the country.”

The lawmakers called on the Trump administration to halt any rule changes that will allow grantmaking and research decisions to be made based on the president’s personal or ideological agenda, by political appointees and without congressional authorization.

“OMB’s guidance would provide little recourse to people subject to political retribution,” the lawmakers continued. “President Trump’s sacking of thousands of NIH researchers and scientists has led to severe understaffing and grant approval delays at NIH. This rule change would make an already problematic situation disastrous.”

The full letter can be read here.