New: Trump’s cuts to NIH-funded US medical and scientific research now totals $3.8 billion.
That and five other stories in the administration's ongoing "assault on science."
Six stories packed into today’s edition of Inside Medicine, starting with some news from our friends over at Grant Watch. Let’s dive in and get you caught up…
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American science continues to hemorrhage. Trump administration grant cuts to scientists now at $3.8 billion.
Grant Watch’s latest report finds that the Trump administration has terminated $3.8 billion in NIH grants to outside researchers since January, the very funding that has powered American dominance in biomedical research for the last century. The number of active grants is currently 74,597, down from 83,943 since just last week. Back in April, there were over 87,000.
Harvard Medical School leads the way in grants terminated during the Trump administration at 340. Some new grants have gone out, however. Johns Hopkins University has received the highest number of new NIH grants at 44. Of note, the head of the FDA came directly from a faculty position at Johns Hopkins. Stanford (the former employer of NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya) has also done relatively well.
Meanwhile, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said, falsely, that life-saving research has not been affected by Trump administration cuts. This week alone, the Trump administration canceled major work on HIV led by researchers at Duke University and Scripps. Kennedy has also said, falsely, that scientists have not lost their jobs in the massive “reductions in force” at the hands of DOGE, despite stories of firings and rehiring of scientists, including at NIOSH, the CDC agency responsible for workplace safety.
Government officials should not deny the facts. They should explain the facts and own their policies. If it is the position of the United States federal government that we no longer wish to be global leaders in science and safety—and fail to reap the corresponding rewards—the public deserves to know why. Policies that cause human suffering and make us less safe must be explained, not denied.
Open tab: Impact Counter says that as of June 3, Trump administration funding discontinuations have killed 101,444 adults and 211,680 children worldwide so far. These deaths are due to malaria, HIV, tuberculosis, malnutrition, and more. Elon Musk may be responsible for more deaths than any civilian this century.
Trump administration releases latest budget document. CDC funding more than halved. Ouch.
HHS released its Fiscal Year 2026 Budget in Brief document yesterday, which continued to build out and itemize deep cuts to its agencies, first reported in Inside Medicine back in April. A 25% reduction in HHS funding will hit many assets particularly hard, including the CDC, which would see a reduction in its budget, falling from $9.25 billion to $4.32 billion, a 53% cut. From pandemic prevention to outbreak response, these cuts will drastically decrease our national readiness to confront health threats.
Many programs, like the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services (SAMHSA) and the Administration on Community Living are poised to lose 100% of their budget. While the HHS document states that these initiatives will be combined into other agencies (which implies that some of the work will go on), something has to give if HHS funding is going to drop from $127.5 billion to $95.4 billion overnight.
The administration portrays this budget as being about efficiency. There might be some of that in there. But given the cuts and RIFs we’ve seen already—changes that have indeed terminated scientists and essential programs—this budget does much more than that: If passed by Congress, the Trump administration’s DOGE-driven attack on America’s health and scientific leadership will actually become the law of the land.
Open tab: Longtime conservative Max Boot’s essay in The Washington Post, “We are witnessing the suicide of a superpower. The president’s assault on science dangerously undermines America’s superpower status.”
Other stories…
Four other shorter entries on important stories I’m following…
NIH staffers walked out on a speech by Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya after he said, "It’s possible that the pandemic was caused by research conducted by human beings…And it’s also possible that the NIH partly sponsored that research.” NIH staffers told HealthDay that the protest was another attempt to bring the new director to the table to discuss rank-and-file concerns about conditions at the agency and many of the decisions being made. Reporting in Walker Bragman’s Substack Important Context adds to a troubling picture of the NIH overall.
Open tab: Speaking of science, “The White House Gutted Science Funding. Now It Wants to ‘Correct’ Research. Thousands of scientists, academics, physicians and researchers have responded to the administration’s executive order about “restoring a gold standard for science,” by Somini Sengupta for The New York Times.
CDC vaccine expert Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos abruptly resigns from Covid-19 vaccine work group. The news came days after HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. usurped the usual process by which United States vaccine policy is determined, leading to sudden changes, including the removal of the CDC’s recommendation in favor of vaccinating young children and pregnant women. The normal (ahem, legal) process involves transparent, specific steps that start with work groups (lead by CDC experts) who gather and analyze data, and which eventually leads to public meetings with votes by appointed experts of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). Over the weekend, FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary (who has no jurisdiction or control over anything at CDC other than as an advisor to Secretary Kennedy) called ACIP a “kangaroo court” on CBS News. Per Reuters, “Panagiotakopoulos said in an email to work group colleagues that her decision to step down was based on the belief she is "no longer able to help the most vulnerable members" of the U.S. population.” To me, this reads as a protest against the specter of the loss of vaccine access to two high-risk groups, following the CDC’s guidance chances last week under pressure from Secretary Kennedy.
A screenshot from CDC.gov—now out of date. The Trump administration is requesting that Congress cede control of USAID. This would legalize the White House’s impounding of USAID spending that began in the early days of the Trump administration and has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths already. It also begs the original question: if this request is necessary, how was the destruction of USAID under Elon Musk’s butcher knife ever legal in the first place? If Congress votes to transfer its spending authority to the Executive Branch, they’ll look even more spineless and feckless than usual, I must say.
The FDA approved a new low-dose Covid-19 vaccine from Moderna last week. The shots performed comparably to older versions of Moderna’s mRNA vaccine. The lower dose was achieved by refining the immune target of the vaccine. Similar to the FDA’s recent approval of Novavax, the approval is officially limited to patients older than 65 or those with pre-existing medical conditions. Nevertheless, US Representative from Georgia Marjorie Taylor Greene blasted the decision on social media as being “Not MAHA at all!!!” So that’s kinda fun.
If you have information about any of the unfolding stories we are following, please email me or find me on Signal at InsideMedicine.88.
Good time for our wealthiest citizens to become far more generous.
Thanks