ICYMI: Murray Blasts Trump and Musk Decimating HHS, Risking Americans’ Health and Livelihoods
Washington DC - U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and a senior member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee issued the following statement upon learning that Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. directed National Institutes of Health (NIH) to pause issuance of all awards.
“The scientists supported by NIH deliver groundbreaking and lifesaving cures that change lives and give patients hope all across this country. I think Americans want to understand: by crushing cancer research, what exactly are Trump and Elon making more efficient? By grinding promising new treatments for cerebral palsy to a halt, what corruption is Elon uncovering? Their game plan here is pretty blatant: gum up the works on the approval process for these grants until the money can’t be spent or entire research programs are forced to shutter.
“Withholding this funding is illegal—Trump, and Elon are suffocating the work of cancer researchers with so much red tape that labs and clinical trials will be forced to shut down. It is plain to see that Trump and Elon are themselves creating waste, fraud, and abuse by illegally choking off lifesaving research. I am calling on every Member of Congress to join me in demanding that NIH grant funding get out the door immediately—to red and blue states—so that researchers can continue working towards cures and treatments.”
Last Thursday, HHS issued a directive calling on NIH to pause issuance of all awards. Since then, the agency has again completely stopped issuing grants. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has been intentionally delaying the NIH approval process for grants and forcing NIH to cancel study section and Advisory Council meetings. For a research grant application to be approved it must be scored by a study section (a group of independent scientists) first and then approved by the appropriate Institute or Center’s Advisory Council. For either to occur, NIH must announce each of these meetings on the Federal Register. However, since Day 1 of the Trump Administration NIH has been prohibited from posting to the Federal Register. According to analysis in informes recientes, NIH has posted no notices on the Federal Register since Trump’s inauguration—yet during the same period last year there were already more than 150 notices posted by NIH.
Senator Murray blasted the Trump administration immediately as soon as NIH announced an illegal new cap on the indirect cost rate, amounting to massive indiscriminate cut—pressing Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on the issue, leading Senate Democrats in pushing back, and forcing amendment votes to reverse the illegal Trump policy in the Senate Budget Committee y en el piso del Senado. She has also pressed the administration for its arbitrary staffing cuts at HHS, its illegal funding and communications freeze.
As a longtime appropriator and former Chair of the Senate HELP Committee, Murray has long fought to boost biomedical research, strengthen public health infrastructure, and make health care more affordable and accessible. Over her years as a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, she has secured billions of dollars in increases for biomedical research at the National Institutes of Health, and during her time as Chair of the HELP Committee, she established the new ARPA-H research agency as part of her Ley PREVENIR Pandemias to advance some of the most cutting-edge research in the field. Senator Murray was also the lead Democratic negotiator of the bipartisan Ley de curaciones del siglo XXI, which delivered a major federal investment to boost NIH research, among many other investments.
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