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national institutes of health
RFK Jr. Will Need a Miracle Cure to Fight Cancer on Trump’s Budget
At the same time Trump is pledging to reverse childhood cancer rates, he and his attack doge Elon Musk are gutting federal health agencies to help pay for huge tax breaks for corporations and the uber rich.
Mar 11, 2025
During his marathon, fact-free speech to Congress last week, President Donald Trump announced that his administration plans to address the growing incidence of childhood cancer.
“Since 1975, rates of child cancer have increased by more than 40%,” Trump said. “Reversing this trend is one of the top priorities for our new presidential commission to make America healthy again, chaired by our new Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. …Our goal is to get toxins out of our environment, poisons out of our food supply, and keep our children healthy and strong.”
As usual, Trump got the statistic wrong. In fact, childhood cancer rates increased 33% since 1975, according to a study published in the journal PLOS One in January (and verified by the American Cancer Society), and the uptick in cases can be at least partly attributed to improved detection technology.
What would a major loss of federal scientific expertise mean for HHS Secretary Kennedy’s childhood cancer commission? Given that Kennedy, a prominent anti-vaccine activist, is not known for paying attention to scientific evidence, it may not matter much.
That said, the PLOS One study did find that some childhood cancers—notably leukemia, lymphoma, brain tumors, liver tumors, and gonadal tumors—are on the rise, so by all means, the federal government should do more to try to reduce them.
But at the same time Trump is pledging to reverse childhood cancer rates and “get toxins out of our environment,” he and his attack doge Elon Musk are gutting federal health agencies to help pay for huge tax breaks for corporations and the uber rich.
Indiscriminate Cuts Across the Board
All of the agencies that protect public health are on the chopping block.
Just a few weeks ago, for example, his administration illegally fired some 5,200 employees at Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), including nearly 1,300 staff members at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), roughly a tenth of the agency’s workforce.
Meanwhile, over at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the new administrator, Lee Zeldin, is threatening a budget cut of at least 65%. That would leave the agency with an annual budget of about $3.2 billion, less than a third of its budget in fiscal year (FY) 1970—the year it began—in inflation-adjusted 2024 dollars. Such a meager budget would destroy the agency, exactly what the fossil fuel industry-funded Republican Party has been wanting to do for years.
The Trump administration is also trying to ax a key portion of National Institutes of Health (NIH) biomedical research funding, which would undermine any effort to curtail childhood cancer—not to mention research on other deadly diseases.
On February 7, it announced it will cut an estimated $4 billion from NIH grants by capping funding for “indirect” overhead costs that cover such expenses as facilities, electric utilities, and administrative and janitorial services at 15%, half the current average rate. About $26 billion of NIH’s $35 billion in FY2023 grants that went to more than 2,500 universities, medical schools, and other research institutions covered direct costs—researchers and laboratories. The balance—$9 billion—paid for overhead.
Experts warn that without adequate overhead support, researchers would not be able to do their work.
Three days after the administration announced its intention to cut the NIH budget, five medical associations and 22 states filed lawsuits challenging the plan. Later that day, U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley in Boston granted a temporary restraining order. She followed up on March 5, the day after Trump’s speech to Congress, by filing a preliminary injunction that put the cuts on hold while the lawsuits proceed. “The risk of harm to research institutions and beyond,” Kelley wrote in a 76-page order, “is immediate, devastating, and irreparable.”
It’s 2017 all Over Again (With a Major Difference)
Trump’s zeal to hobble federal medical and scientific research should not come as a surprise. To a great extent, his current budget-chopping campaign reflects the FY2018 budget he proposed in May 2017. That radical proposal called for shrinking the budgets of NIH by 18%; EPA by 31%, the Food and Drug Administration by 31%, and the CDC by 17%, which would have been its lowest budget since 1997. It also called for hacking $610 billion from Medicaid over the following decade on top of an $880-billion cut a Republican healthcare plan advocated.
That budget was dead on arrival, despite the fact that Republicans controlled the White House, the House, and the Senate, albeit by only a 51 to 49 margin. Oklahoma Republican Tom Cole, then-chair of the House spending subcommittee that funds NIH, toldScientific American that he did not expect Congress to support Trump’s proposed cuts. Other legislators from both sides of the aisle also rejected the president’s NIH budget proposal. (Nevertheless, Trump’s previous administration did a lot of damage by eliminating or weakening over 100 environmental safeguards.)
Today, Republicans have the White House and slim majorities in both houses of Congress. Unlike 2017, however, congressional Republicans are in lockstep with Trump, and thus far have been cheering him and Musk on from the sidelines as they dismantle the federal government.
What would a major loss of federal scientific expertise mean for HHS Secretary Kennedy’s childhood cancer commission? Given that Kennedy, a prominent anti-vaccine activist, is not known for paying attention to scientific evidence, it may not matter much. It’s been widely reported that Kennedy has been telling children and adults in Texas to try Vitamin A, cod liver oil, and other dubious treatments if they get measles instead of urging them to get vaccinated, so one could only imagine what he would recommend that parents give their children to protect them from cancer. Aloe? Emu oil? Kombucha? All of the above?
This column was originally posted on Money Trail, a new Substack site co-founded by Elliott Negin.
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Facing Trump Attack, People 'Stand Up for Science' at Rallies Across US and Beyond
"When research stops, people suffer and people die," said one campaigner.
Mar 07, 2025
Scientists and their supporters in dozens of U.S. cities—as well as across Europe—rallied on Friday to demand the Trump administration end its assault on federal agencies, including those that research health, the climate, and other life-or-death issues.
The main "Stand Up for Science" rally was held Friday afternoon at the Lincoln Memorial, with advocates responding to a call made by Emory University doctoral candidate Colette Delawalla last month—as federal employees were learning of President Donald Trump's efforts to limit research grants at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the administration's order for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to purge any articles that mention gender identity or LGBTQ+ issues, and as Lee Zeldin, who has opposed clean air and water protections, took the helm of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
"I'm planning a Stand Up for Science protest in D.C.," wrote Delawalla in frustration on the social media platform Bluesky on February 8.
Since Delawalla and other organizers, including University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill doctoral student J.P. Flores and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory biologist Emma Courtney, began planning the event in Washington, the science community's alarm over the actions of the Trump administration has only grown.
In late February, reporting showed that the Trump administration had circumvented court rulings in order to block tens of billions of dollars in NIH grants that fund crucial research on numerous diseases.
At the rally on Friday, former NIH Director Francis Collins said the science research that takes place at the agency is "for the people."
With numerous global public health threats currently evolving—the spread of avian flu and several measles outbreaks in the U.S. and a new variant of mpox discovered in the Democratic Republic of Congo—Collins said that "this would be a terrible time to dismantle our infectious disease research and our global public health efforts."
"The success of the American public science enterprise, which is the envy of the rest of the world over the past decades, it is of the people, by the people, and for the people," said Collins. "It's one of our nation's greatest achievements, enabling stunning discoveries about how life works, extending life expectancy, reducing disease burden, and, by the way, science is responsible for more than 50% of the economic growth of the United States since World War II."
Other recent anti-science actions by the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress include: the passage of a bill to end the Methane Emissions Reduction Program; right-wing billionaire Elon Musk's continued efforts via the so-called Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE) to cut science and research spending at federal agencies, and the last week's firing of hundreds of staffers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Trump and Musk's actions have led universities to begin reducing admissions and even rescinding placement offers to post-graduate programs, threatening the future of biomedical research.
"When research stops, people suffer and people die," said Samantha Jade Durán, a disability justice advocate, at the Stand Up for Science rally in Washington, D.C. on Friday. "We cannot let that happen. We have seen what's possible when we invest in science. Polio was eradicated. HIV was transformed from a death sentence to a manageable and undetectable condition. Cancer treatments are getting better every year, and these breakthroughs didn't happen by accident. They happened because we chose to fund science."
On social media, organizers on Friday posted images of large rallies in Atlanta, Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City.
Solidarity marches also took place in Paris and Montpelier, France.
The rallies on Friday, said U.S. organizers, are "just the beginning."
"Our policy goals include a restoration of federal scientific funding, the reinstatement of wrongfully terminated employees at federal agencies, an end to governmental interference and censorship in science, and a renewed commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in science," said organizers in the U.S. "We are also committed to empowering scientists—and anyone who has benefited from scientific advancements—to engage in sustained advocacy in the years to come."
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Banning NIH Grant Meetings, Trump Circumvents Courts That Blocked Funding Freeze
"The discoveries that aren't made—you can't point to them, because they will never be made."
Feb 22, 2025
The Trump administration's attempt to freeze all federal grants, including those at the National Institutes of Health, has been temporarily blocked since late last month, when two federal judges ruled that President Donald Trump did not have the authority to pull back the funding—but new reporting on Friday detailed how the administration has circumvented the rulings, threatening critical funding for biomedical research.
As The New York Timesreported, the Trump administration has issued an order "forbidding health officials from giving public notice of upcoming grant review meetings," blocking "an obscure but necessary cog in the grant-making machinery that delivers some $47 billion annually to research on Alzheimer's, heart disease, and other ailments."
Notices are required before any federal meetings can be held, and the order led to the cancellation of 42 out of 47 previously-scheduled NIH grant application meetings this week, impacting research that would have studied pancreatic cancer, addiction, brain injuries, and children's health, among other subjects.
Without public notices being posted in the Federal Register by the NIH, about 16,000 grant applications asking for $1.5 billion in research funding have already been stalled, reportedNPR.
"Applications will come in and basically they go into a black hole and nothing can be done with them," one person who remained anonymous told NPR. "That is where we are now."
The Times reported that an email from an NIH official on February 7 stated that the order blocking public notices "came from the HHS level," referring to the Department of Health and Human Services. The ban was in effect "indefinitely," said the official.
"Applications will come in and basically they go into a black hole and nothing can be done with them. That is where we are now."
"People in every community have to understand what gutting NIH funding means," said U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) on Saturday. "The cures unlocked by NIH-funded researchers might one day save your life—but because of Trump and [Department of Government Efficiency head Elon] Musk, now they might never be discovered at all."
Many health researchers and others who rely on federal grants breathed a sigh of relief when Trump's funding freeze was blocked by the judicial system late last month, and Judge Angel Kelley of the Federal District Court for the District of Massachusetts on Friday extended a separate order that aimed to cut about $4 billion in grants that it provides for "indirect costs" such as lab equipment and facilities maintenance.
Regarding Trump's broader federal funding freeze, U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island heard arguments in the case on Friday, and said he hopes to issue a final ruling in about a week following his temporary restraining order last month.
But unless it is lifted, the HHS order blocking grant review meetings will likely lead to "missing" discoveries, researchers toldThe Washington Post on Saturday.
Without the ability to secure grant funding, research organizations are preparing to lay off researchers and accept fewer students to work in their laboratories, the Post reported.
"The discoveries that aren't made—you can't point to them, because they will never be made," Jeremy Berg, former director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, told the Post. "The hard part is you don't know what you missed until years later, when something doesn't happen."
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