{"id":29427,"date":"2025-06-10T21:11:23","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T21:11:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=29427"},"modified":"2025-06-10T21:24:29","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T21:24:29","slug":"democrats-grill-n-i-h-leader-on-cuts-who-is-calling-the-shots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=29427","title":{"rendered":"Democrats Grill N.I.H. Leader on Cuts: Who Is Calling the Shots?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Senators criticized the head of the National Institutes of Health for not taking responsibility for Trump administration cuts to research funding.<\/p>\n

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As the Trump administration clamped down on the country\u2019s medical research funding apparatus in recent months, scientists and administrators at the National Institutes of Health often privately wondered how much autonomy the agency\u2019s director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, had.<\/p>\n

After all, the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk\u2019s signature cost-cutting project, helped drive decisions to cancel or delay research grants. Other projects fell victim to President Trump\u2019s face-off with universities over antisemitism. But given an opportunity before a Senate panel on Tuesday to dispel suspicions about who wields influence at the N.I.H., Dr. Bhattacharya did little to claim ownership of perhaps the rockiest period in the agency\u2019s many decades of funding research institutions.<\/p>\n

Decisions to freeze grant payments to Northwestern University \u201chappened before I got into office,\u201d Dr. Bhattacharya told the panel, members of the Senate Appropriations Committee.<\/p>\n

He repeatedly said a proposal to shrink the N.I.H. budget by $18 billion \u2014 nearly 40 percent \u2014 was \u201ca collaboration between Congress and the administration\u201d and declined to talk in detail about how the cuts would affect the agency.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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And pressed on an effort to curtail funding to universities for research overhead expenses \u2014 a cost-cutting move that is baked into the administration’s 2026 budget proposal \u2014 Dr. Bhattacharya said, \u201cI don\u2019t want to get into that,\u201d citing ongoing litigation.<\/p>\n

Several Democrats on the committee said they were confused about who was pulling the strings at the agency.<\/p>\n

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Senators criticized the head of the National Institutes of Health for not taking responsibility for Trump administration cuts to research funding.As the Trump administration clamped down on the country\u2019s medical research funding apparatus in recent months, scientists and administrators at the National Institutes of Health often privately wondered how much autonomy the agency\u2019s director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, had.After all, the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk\u2019s signature cost-cutting project, helped drive decisions to cancel or delay research grants. Other projects fell victim to President Trump\u2019s face-off with universities over antisemitism. But given an opportunity before a Senate panel on Tuesday to dispel suspicions about who wields influence at the N.I.H., Dr. Bhattacharya did little to claim ownership of perhaps the rockiest period in the agency\u2019s many decades of funding research institutions.Decisions to freeze grant payments to Northwestern University \u201chappened before I got into office,\u201d Dr. Bhattacharya told the panel, members of the Senate Appropriations Committee.He repeatedly said a proposal to shrink the N.I.H. budget by $18 billion \u2014 nearly 40 percent \u2014 was \u201ca collaboration between Congress and the administration\u201d and declined to talk in detail about how the cuts would affect the agency.And pressed on an effort to curtail funding to universities for research overhead expenses \u2014 a cost-cutting move that is baked into the administration’s 2026 budget proposal \u2014 Dr. Bhattacharya said, \u201cI don\u2019t want to get into that,\u201d citing ongoing litigation.Several Democrats on the committee said they were confused about who was pulling the strings at the agency.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29429,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29427"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29430,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29427\/revisions\/29430"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}