Despite lawsuits challenging Trump’s order, the research grant from the NIH is still frozen
How Congress is going to freeze scientific review panels? Dr. Varmus argues that the Trump administration is only interested in making sure that Congress is not concerned with appropriating funds
These actions are all “unprecedented”, says Harold Varmus, a former director of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) who is now a cancer researcher at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City. One of the most valuable parts of the government is being taken away, which is unprecedented in the modern era.
These review panels are suspended because the Trump administration has barred the agency from taking a key procedural step necessary to schedule them. Scientists are faced with difficult decisions about the future of their programs due to the lapse in funding caused by this.
Some legal scholars say that this ‘back-door’ approach to freezing funding is illegal. That’s because the US Constitution gives Congress, not the president or his team, the power to appropriate funds, says David Super, an administrative-law specialist at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington DC. Blocking “advisory-committee meetings that are legally required to make payments is no different in effect than simply refusing to sign contracts or issue cheques”, he says.
How scientific research has changed since Donald Trump’s presidency: What have scientists learned in the last two decades of scientific funding decisions from the US National Library of Medicine?
Two separate panels are used to consider research-grant applications for approval from the US National Library of Medicine. The first is a study section, which is a group of independent scientists who convene to score applications. The second is a meeting of the agency’s advisory council, which is a separate group of external and internal scientists and advisers that acts as a final check on an application before a funding decision is made.
According to the e-mail, in the future, the Trump administration will require that notice be posted at least 35 days prior to grant-review meetings instead of the standard 15. This means that, even if these notices were allowed again from today, the earliest date on which a new grant-review meeting could be scheduled is 28 March.
A small number of study sections have convened since Trump took office, but only because a Federal Register notice was posted to schedule them before his inauguration. The continuing cancellation of these meetings has had a snowball effect, and there is now an enormous backlog of applications (see ‘Trend reversal’).
It will become impossible to peer review in time for the second meeting date if we keep getting more backing up, according to anNIH scientific review officer, who is authorized to speak to the press.
The changes to US science began immediately after Trump became president, with a flurry of executive orders on how to operate inside existing laws.
Some of those orders had been anticipated, including pulling the United States out of the 2015 Paris agreement to rein in global climate emissions and terminating the nation’s membership of the World Health Organization. Others had surprising and immediate ripple effects through the scientific community.
An order attempted to define just two biological genders, male and female, and banned actions that promote or otherwise instill gender ideology. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) pulled data sets from their websites and pulled back manuscript submissions from scientific journals to purge terms such as gender and gender expression from the internet.
The executive order banned what Trump called “illegal and immoral discrimination programs,” going by the name “diversity, equity, and inclusion”. Any federal employee who did not report colleagues defying the DEI orders would face “adverse consequences”, according to an e-mail sent to government workers. To many scientists’ dismay, agencies began terminating DEI programmes, including environmental-justice efforts, which are programmes aimed at protecting low-income communities vulnerable to pollution and climate change. Even some scientific societies and private research organizations scrubbed DEI mentions from their websites. The investigation of foundations, as well as non-profit organizations and other private entities that are not in compliance, was called for by Trump in one of his orders.
Principal investigators who lead research teams are suffering in this environment, says a university scientist who requested anonymity because their research is funded by multiple US agencies. “Everything is on you to manage your grants and your team,” they say, adding that “there’s a lot of fear of people not wanting to say or do the wrong thing” and therefore lose financial support for their work. It’s chaotic and I’m losing sleep.
The partnership between Musk and Trump has flourished. The pair are working together to eliminate agencies that fund disease research, prevention and care.
To accomplish this goal, the Trump administration — working through the US Department of Government Efficiency, which Musk reportedly advises — has moved quickly to demoralize and gut the federal workforce, including about 280,000 scientists and engineers. Initially, a 30 January e-mail offer to all federal employees asked them to “move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector”; around 75,000 employees subsequently resigned, on the promise that they would retain their salary until September. Early-career researchers were particularly affected by the layoffs of slacker employees in February, since they are usually hired into their positions within the past two years.
US President Donald Trump’s administration has ordered Federal employees to post notices at least 35 days in advance of grant-review meetings, the Department of Government Efficiency said. If federal employees don’t do so, they would face “adverse consequences”, the department added. The notice will have to be posted at least 15 days prior to the grant-review meetings.