'Critical': 14 GOP senators call on Trump to stop withholding money from their states

More than a dozen Senate Republicans have co-signed a letter urging President Donald Trump's administration to release health research grant money their states are counting on to find cures for deadly diseases.

According to a Friday report in Politico, the group of 14 senators has asked White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director Russell Vought to end its freeze of National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant funding. The letter — which was chiefly written by Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) — gently reminded Vought that the funding in question had already been approved by Congress, meaning that the administration's refusal to release the funding is illegal.

“Suspension of these appropriated funds — whether formally withheld or functionally delayed — could threaten Americans’ ability to access better treatments and limit our nation’s leadership in biomedical science,” Britt wrote. “It also risks inadvertently severing ongoing NIH-funded research prior to actionable results.”

READ MORE: Trump official brutally mocked after saying he was 'not going to tolerate' sick Americans

"Withholding or suspending these funds would jeopardize that trust and hinder progress on critical health challenges facing our nation," the letter continued. "Ultimately, this is about finding cures and seeing them through to fruition."

While urging the administration to release the NIH grant money, the letter simultaneously heaped praise on Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and NIH director Jay Bhattacharya, asserting that they had a "shared goal" of "restor[ing] public trust in the NIH." Politico reported that the University of Alabama is one of the largest recipients of NIH grant funding and is the largest employer in the Yellowhammer State.

In addition to Britt, the letter was signed by Sens. John Boozman (R-Ark.), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va), Bill Cassidy (R-La.) Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Dave McCormick (R-Pa.), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Todd Young (R-Ind.)

The recent plea from the 14 Republican senators comes shortly after a separate letter from 10 Senate Republicans asking Vought to end the OMB's freeze of federal K-12 education funding that school districts are counting on for the coming academic year. The Department of Education announced earlier this month that $6.8 billion in funding was "under review" with little explanation. On Friday, the administration abruptly ended the freeze, also with little explanation aside from stating the review had been completed. EdWeek reported that the freeze had thrown budget planning committees into chaos, as districts had to plan for the possibility of having the federal funding suddenly cut off.

READ MORE: Trump DOJ sitting on 'more than 100,000 pages' of unreleased Epstein materials: NY Times

Click here to read Politico's report in its entirety (subscription required).