Statement from Kayla Hancock, Director of Protect Our Care’s Public Health Project: “Just like the Health Secretary’s unrealistic and unaffordable rhetoric on making America healthy, RFK Jr.’s rhetoric on clinical research is empty, not to mention insulting to the thousands of scientists he’s fired and defunded. In reality, Kennedy’s HHS is doing everything it can to stifle American medical innovation, from wrapping countless research grants in bureaucratic red tape to requesting billions less for research in the latest Trump budget. Trump and RFK Jr. are so obsessed with denying resources that may dare to fix disparities in health for women, people of color, or those with disabilities, that they’d rather sabotage innovation benefiting everyone. If this is what leading by example looks like to RFK Jr., the U.S. is truly in a race to the bottom.”
- SHOT: Fox News (Op-ed by Trump Health Secretary RFK Jr.):The future of medicine should be built in America: Under President Trump’s leadership, HHS is restoring America’s position in clinical research
- CHASER: STAT, 6/19: Federal grant delays could jeopardize essential disability services, research: Hundreds of disability researchers across the United States worry about their jobs, and the future of their institutions as governmental delay in grant funding drags on several months behind schedule. […] The funding uncertainties are the latest example of the sweeping cuts and delays to health funding by the Trump administration. Earlier, in March, a STAT survey of more than 1,000 researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health found that labs are closing, early-career researchers are decamping for other fields, and scientists no longer trust the federal government as a scientific partner. Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has also overseen a massive reduction in force across the Department of Health and Human Services that has increased delays in federal grantmaking.
“It feels like the research infrastructure of our country is crumbling,” said Kelsey Goddard, an assistant research professor at the Research and Training Center on Independent Living at the University of Kansas.
- LIME: NOTUS, 6/19: The Trump Administration Is Holding Up Billions in HHS Funding: The Trump administration is holding up billions in grant funding because of a new political review process that goes up through Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the White House. To get congressionally approved dollars out the door, all HHS funding opportunities must first clear an AI screening which flags certain keywords that the administration finds unacceptable, such as culture, harm reduction, gender and transgender. Then they’re sent to an HHS assistant secretary for financial review for approval before going to Kennedy’s office. Internal documents, public records and interviews with a dozen current and former HHS employees and grant recipients all demonstrate the Trump administration’s new spending regime is leading to unprecedented delays in the release of funds. The backlogs are putting key public health programs at risk and causing a strain on states and local organizations that rely on the federal dollars to carry out key health activities, these sources say. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, told NOTUS the changes at HHS are politicizing federal grants and creating the kind of red tape Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency sought to eliminate. “It’s undermining America’s edge in research, holding up funding for front-line responders, and denying resources and services to communities because of politics,” Murray said. “Putting a Trump-appointed goon in front of every basic grant that is otherwise ready to go is nothing short of self-sabotage.”
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