'It's a huge deal': This Trump move sets up showdown with 14 GOP senators

29 July

U.S. President Donald Trump holds a law enforcement event in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., May 19, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

President Donald Trump's administration has imposed a complete block on funding that goes to external health researchers — cutting off billions of dollars intended for studies on diabetes, cancer, and numerous other illnesses, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

The report noted that this suspension was inserted as a footnote by the Office of Management and Budget, under Director Russell Vought, in the official funding document for the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The footnote specified that for the remainder of the fiscal year, NIH financial resources could only be used for staff salaries and operational expenses, and would not support any new grants or renewal of existing ones. Since most NIH-supported research is conducted by outside scientists, this move effectively freezes a large portion of its grant program.

The restriction halts approximately $15 billion in NIH funding, based on an estimate from Sen. Patty Murray’s (D-Wash.) office.

“This outrageous decision to prevent NIH from spending the funding that Congress has explicitly provided for medical research must immediately be reversed—life‑changing cures and patients’ prognoses hang in the balance,” Murray told The Journal.

Former NIH institute director Jeremy Berg said: “It’s a huge deal… I can’t imagine any reasonable rationale for doing this other than the desire to do damage to NIH and biomedical research.”

According to the report, the NIH leadership is actively working to remove or modify the footnote restriction, according to internal communications reviewed by the publication.

The funding pause is said to have triggered growing friction with members of Congress, many of whom have raised alarms over the slowdown in medical research support.

Last week, over a dozen Senate Republicans signed a letter urging President Donald Trump’s administration to release NIH research grants that their states depend on for advances against fatal diseases.

A group of 14 senators, as reported by Politico, formally addressed OMB Director Russell Vought, requesting he lift the hold on NIH grant funding.

The letter, primarily authored by Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), noted that Congress had already approved the funding, and stressed that the administration’s decision to withhold it amounts to an illegal action.

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