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The NIH funding wars

Are Republican senators more loyal to Trump, or to their home-state economies?

On July 25, a surprising group of 14 Republican senators sent Trump OMB chief Russell Vought a letter demanding that the administration release upwards of $2 billion in NIH grants that were frozen or canceled in early March on entirely bogus and illegal grounds of excessive DEI. The signers included such usual Trump stalwarts as Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Katie Britt of Alabama, who composed the letter.

“Suspension of these appropriated funds—whether formally withheld or functionally delayed—could threaten Americans’ ability to access better treatments and limit our nation’s leadership in biomedical science,” Britt and her colleagues warned. “It also risks inadvertently severing ongoing NIH-funded research prior to actionable results.”

The other signers included Sens. John Boozman of Arkansas, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Tim Scott of South Carolina, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Jerry Moran of Kansas, and Todd Young of Indiana, all of whom have universities in their states that have lost funding.

So far, the administration has done nothing in response. Some NIH funding has been released, but only in response to direct court orders, only in other states, and only in part. This deep dive by The Chronicle of Higher Education explains just how researchers have been jerked around and their work ruined.

On June 16, U.S. District Court Judge William Young, based in Boston, issued a ruling ordering that most of the grants be restored. Judge Young, a Reagan appointee, said that he had never seen such discrimination in 40 years on the bench, adding, “Have we no shame?”

But the order applies only to the 16 Democrat-led states that filed the lawsuit challenging the freeze. The administration has responded by slow-walking its compliance and appealing the ruling.

On July 24, the administration made one of its emergency appeals to the Supreme Court, asking that the lower-court order be suspended until the high court could address the substance of the issue. The Supreme Court has not acted yet, but its pattern has been to grant such stays and to keep delaying a definitive ruling.

You might conclude that the group of 14 Republican senators were making their stand for home consumption and were not politically serious. If they had been, they would have made their demand while the fate of Trump’s budget bill was hanging fire and needed their support, rather than after the fact when they had no leverage.

Actually, they do have some leverage. Within just two months, Congress has to act to extend the debt ceiling again, and appropriations bills must pass, both by October 1. So we will soon find out if they are serious.

Because of the Boston district court ruling, the universities that have had NIH funding even partially restored are all in blue or purple states. Last year, the University of Alabama received about $350 million in NIH funding. That’s serious money. Several universities in South Carolina got a total of about $225 million. None of that funding has been restored.

NIH, for its entire history, has been one of the most principled of federal agencies. Its grants and contracts are awarded on the basis of peer-reviewed science. Yet even NIH, which dwells in the real world, has not been oblivious to the logic of what might be delicately called pork barrel. If NIH awarded the lion’s share of its funds to Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and the like, the current broad support that NIH enjoys in Congress would evaporate. NIH manages to spread its largesse around, presumably on the merits.

Industrial policy has been controversial for half a century. Biden was the first modern president to openly embrace it, with subsidy programs like the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act—which Trump is rapidly destroying.

When you think about it, NIH and the industries that it supports offer a splendid example of successful industrial policy. America’s lead in pharmaceuticals, biotech, medical devices, and lifesaving therapies is built on NIH’s research grants. The phrase “industrial policy” connotes the old factory economy, but the NIH version is cutting-edge, postindustrial science policy. It takes a real moron to want to squander that.

Trump’s mash-up of anti-science and anti-DEI comes together in the freezing of these NIH grants and his attempted destruction of NIH itself. We will soon find out if Republican Senate supporters of Trump are serious about defending their home-state economies.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

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