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Category: Biomedical Research

Jim O’Neill nominated as NSF director

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President Trump has nominated Jim O’Neill to serve as Director of the National Science Foundation. His name was among a list of nominations sent to the Senate yesterday morning. O’Neill was removed from his position as deputy secretary of HHS last month as part of a broader restructuring, which also saw Jay Bhattacharya named acting CDC director. The NSF has been without a permanent leader since last April, when director Sethuraman Panchanathan resigned as the Trump administration cut hundreds of research grants and proposed massive budget cuts.

O’Neill served as a senior HHS official during the George W. Bush administration, before moving to the private sector, where he worked closer with Peter Thiel. He was the managing director at Thiel’s Mithril Capital Management and also served as CEO of the Thiel Foundation, before joining the second Trump administration as deputy HHS secretary. If confirmed by the Senate, O’Neill would be the first non-scientist to lead the NSF.

Jay Bhattacharya named acting CDC director

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Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the head of the NIH, is set to become acting director of the CDC, according to administration officials. He will continue to run the NIH, serving both positions until President Trump appoints a permanent CDC director that gets confirmed by the Senate.

Bhattacharya will replace Jim O’Neill, who was removed last week by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as part of a broader restructuring. White House officials said President Trump will name O’Neill to lead the National Science Foundation.

O’Neill was confirmed by the Senate last June as deputy secretary of HHS and had been leading the CDC temporarily after the ousting of Susan Monarez in August following her disagreements with Secretary Kennedy over vaccine recommendations. O’Neill led the CDC through its most controversial changes to vaccine policy, including removing meningitis, flu, hepatitis A, and rotavirus from the list of routinely recommended vaccines.

The restructuring also promotes Chris Klomp, deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, to chief counselor overseeing all HHS operations.

The leadership shake-up comes as administration officials look to focus on President Trump’s health policy moves, particularly his push to lower drug prices, ahead of the midterm elections.

Administration Seeks to Dismantle ED by Moving Programs to Different Agencies

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While publicly acknowledging earlier this year that Congressional approval would be needed to officially terminate the Education Department, the Administration announced today a series of Interagency Agreements (IAA) to move vast portions of its portfolio to other agencies in an effort to dismantle it from the inside.  The announcement from ED is available here.

Specifically, ED is proposing to move six sets of programs to four other federal agencies:

  • Programs  currently under jurisdiction of Office of Higher Education (NOT Title IV student financial aid programs) and the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education would be transferred to the Department of Labor– the factsheets for these agreements are here and here.
  • Most of tribal and Native American education programs would be moved to the Department of Interior– the factsheet is available here.
  • International Education and Foreign Language Studies would be shipped to State Department– the factsheet on that transfer is available here. 
  • Two sets of programs would be moved to the Department of Health and Human Services:  Foreign Medical Accreditation and Child Care Access Means Parents in School– the factsheets for these proposed moves are here and here.

Additional reports about the proposed moves are available here, here, and here.

Although these moves have been proposed by the Administration, they are unlikely to be the last word on this front.  We should expect legal and other challenges to today’s annoucements.

Trump Administration Releases FY27 Research Priorities Document

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On Thursday, the Trump Administration released its Fiscal Year (FY) 2027 Administration Research and Development Budget Priorities and Cross-Cutting Actions Document. The document, signed by OMB Director Russ Vought and OSTP Director Michael Krastios, outlines the administration’s research priorities, describing its mission to align the government’s “role in the S&T enterprise to once again drive R&D that is bold, mission-driven, and unapologetically in service of the American people.”

Vought and Krastios list 5 top administration priorities in the coming fiscal year. The priorities are to:

  1. Ensure Unrivaled American Leadership in Critical and Emergin Technologies
  2. Unleash American Energy Dominance and Explore New Frontiers
  3. Strengthen American Security
  4. Strengthen and Safeguard American Health and Biotechnology
  5. Assure America’s Continued Space Dominance

The memorandum also describes the administration’s intent to undertake a number of crosscutting actions to “usher in the Golden Age of American Innovation.” These include:

  1. Implementing and Supporting Gold Standard Science
  2. Building the S&T Workforce of the Future
  3. Expanding and Making Accessible World-Class Research Infrastructure
  4. Revitalizing and Strengthening America’s S&T Ecosystem
  5. Focusing on High-Value Research Efforts.

Specifics regarding each priority can be found in the document linked above.

 

 

 

 

NIH Pauses Grant Cancellations

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In an internal NIH memo circulated on Tuesday, Michelle Bulls, who helps oversee the agency’s external funding arm, directed agency staff not to cancel any additional research projects. Bulls instructed staff that, “effective immediately, please do not terminate any additional grant projects.” The memo marks a retreat by the agency, which has slashed funding for medical research and terminated hundreds of awards since the beginning of the Trump administration.

The memo comes in the wake of two important court decisions regarding cuts to federal research funding. A federal judge in Massachusetts ruled last week that some of the administration’s grant cancellations were “void and illegal,” and accused the government of racial discrimination and prejudice against LGBTQ individuals. Additionally, a federal judge in California temporarily blocked the canceling of grants to the University of California on Monday, ruling that the grant terminations violated the First Amendment. The administration is considering appeals to both decisions.

In the meantime, N.I.H. officials said they were continuing to categorize medical research grants based on whether they included topics disfavored by the Trump administration, even if they were not terminating those grants.