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Category: Health/Medical

Senate HELP committee to vote on key bills

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 On Thursday, February 26, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee will vote on several significant bills regarding access to quality education and health care.

The bills under consideration include:

  • S. 1602, Mathematical and Statistical Modeling Education Act
  • S. 1558, Understanding the True Cost of College Act of 2025
  • S. 3747, Home School Graduation Recognition Act
  • S. 1782, Charlotte Woodward Organ Transplant Discrimination Prevention Act
  • S. 1552, Living Donor Protection Act of 2025
  • S. 3315, Health Care Cybersecurity and Resiliency Act of 2025

Date: Thursday, February 26, 2026

Time: 10:00 AM ET/ 9:00 AM CT

Location: 430 Dirksen Senate Office Building

Link to watch live

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.

Congress Home for the Holidays

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After a busy week, Senators huddled on the floor Thursday night as they made an eleventh-hour attempt to find a path forward on bringing up a bundle of five bills or minibus for consideration before the end of 2025. No agreement to move forward was reached after Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, both of Colorado, announced they would hold up the package after White House OMB director Russ Vought’s decision to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research, which is based in Colorado.

 

The package under consideration in the Senate would fund the Departments of Defense, Education, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce (including NOAA), Health and Human Services (including NIH), Transportation, Labor and Interior, along with the EPA and NSF.

A few Republican Senators have held the bill from moving forward but released a hold after Senate leadership agreed to an amendment vote on stripping earmarks in the legislation. The Colorado hold is new to the OMB decision.

The Senate will resume consideration and negotiations in January.

 

 

OBBB Signed Into Law

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President Donald Trump signed his “One Big, Beautiful Bill” into law during the July 4th picnic on the White House grounds, enacting a sweeping multitrillion-dollar legislative package that reflects the core of his policy agenda. The measure passed with near-unanimous Republican support in both chambers of Congress following months of negotiations and intense pressure from the president and GOP leadership.

The legislation extends Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and boosts funding for immigration enforcement and national defense. To balance the increased spending, the bill imposes substantial reductions to domestic programs, slashing Medicaid and food assistance by $1.2 trillion and cutting billions from federal higher education funding. According to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, the bill will increase the national deficit by $3.3 trillion over the next decade and result in 11.8 million additional people losing health coverage.

Despite internal dissent and unanimous Democratic opposition, Trump succeeded in pushing the massive reconciliation bill through Congress in time for the July 4th deadline.

 

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.