Politics Trumps Science as Funding for University-based BioMed is Slashed

Trump and Project 2025's latest attack on science isn’t about figuring out what’s best for America. It’s about rigid ideology, an approach that's historically led to catastrophe.

The Trump attack on science continues

The Trump administration is slashing billions of dollars in research funding tied to medical-science studies at universities nationwide, a move that could threaten research underway on cancer, heart disease, diabetes and likely dozens of other ailments.

The $4 billion cut in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding was announced Friday. It slashes the amount of overhead schools pay for the infrastructure that allows their studies to occur. This can include costs for buildings, utilities, services and support staff. And no surprise, the idea for the cuts comes from Project 2025, the road map for Donald Trump since he won the presidency.

Project 2025 insists the spending subsidizes diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, the race-based veneer this administration wraps around any change it pushes for.

It sounds ridiculous right? But the issue isn’t about figuring out which programs may need this funding the most, or what’s best for America. That would take too much common sense. It comes down simply to rigid ideology, a perilous approach that historically has led to catastrophic outcomes worldwide.

“Congress should cap the indirect cost rate paid to universities so that it does not exceed the lowest rate a university accepts from a private organization to fund research efforts,” according to Project 2025, the road map for the Trump administration, “This market-based reform would help reduce federal taxpayer subsidization of leftist agendas.”

Leftist agendas? Like, you know, learning more about cancer or diabetes or sickle cell anemia? Is that really a leftist agenda?

The NIH funding supports about 412,000 jobs tied to scientific endeavors, from research assistants to grant managers, along with equipment, facilities, services, utilities, according to United for Medical Research, an organization of universities and health advocates.

Under the new policy, which takes effect tomorrow, the NIH will cap “indirect funds” for these costs at 15%, down from an average of 26%. For many universities, this will subtract millions of dollars away from their ability to do quality research.

It’s yet another example of the Trump administration being penny wise and pound foolish for purely political purposes. For every $100 million of funding, research supported by the NIH generates 76 patents, which produce 20% more economic value than other U.S. patents and create opportunities for about $600 million in future research and development.

But I guess the money is needed for Trump’s plan to extend, and likely expand, tax cuts that have primarily benefitted the wealthiest among us.

Open Questions

What’s left now is a whole lot of questions as schools try to figure out how to cover the deficit, what it could mean for the future and how this administration’s monomaniacal and, frankly, racist attack on the whole idea of diversity, equity, and inclusion could affect the reach and direction of their programs. NIH grants are fiercely competitive with only about 20% of applications successful.

Vanderbilt University, for instance, is coordinating a multisite research study on men from different populations diagnosed and treated for localized prostate cancer. The study includes white men, non-Hispanic Black men, Hispanic men, Asians and other races. Would this be considered DEI-based and would it lose federal funding under the government’s attack on diversity programs?

In reporting on the cuts, Washington Post reporters Susan Svrluga and Danielle Douglas-Gabriel talked with David Thomas, the president of Morehouse College in Atlanta, an institution serving Black men.

At Morehouse, the medical school was founded to limit inequities in health care, especially for Black and urban populations, and those questions are baked into the design of many studies, Thomas said. He’s worried that faculty could change the kind of questions they’re asking because of the fear they’ll lose their grants altogether.

Ted Mitchell, the president of the American Council on Education, a nonprofit that works with university leaders, told the Post that some labs were in the process of immediately shutting down. Mitchell expected lawsuits to be filed seeking to block the new policy as soon as Monday. If successful, “we will only have lost a weekend” of research, he said.

Otherwise, Mitchell warned, there will be “less biomedical innovation, and that is going to contribute to higher degrees of disease and death in the country.”

Kennedy’s Influence

Meanwhile, by taking this action now and announcing it late Friday, the goal is likely to separate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s approval by the Senate as Trump’s health secretary from a controversial action that may affect what could already be a close vote in the Senate.

At least some of the affected universities and medical centers are located in Republican districts, and senators could face blowback as a result. In New York, where I live, six schools won $2.4 billion in NIH funding in 2023, including $953 million for indirect costs, according to Erin Kane, quoted this morning by Heather Cox Richardson in her column Letters From an American.

The new rate for indirect funding would allow only $220 million for overhead, a loss of $723 million.

I’l be checking today whether this includes Stony Brook University on Long Island, my home area, which has a connected Cancer Center, a Heart Institute, a Neurosciences Institute and a Trauma Center among its biomedical programs. Stony Brook is in a congressional district that voted Republican.

Meanwhile, don’t kid yourself about Kennedy’s involvement here. It’s likely just a first step for this longterm anti-vaxxer and proponent of junk science, who wants nothing more than to muscle aside the existing science and medical system to make room for his odd and dangerous conspiracy theories.

Kennedy has already pledged to replace hundreds of employees at the National Institutes of Health, stripping away years of scientific and medical expertise in the process and opening the way for him to say whatever he wants about vaccines and other drugs he’s attacked in the past.

Could some of the money being stopped by this decision been misused along the way, and could some of the top universities, with large endowments, take a little less? Quite possibly, but that would mean Trump’s government would actually have to take the time to gather real information to get that type of information. And that’s not something they’re set up to do, or even want to do.

Staying Healthy

Meanwhile, Trump is doing his best to undercut our ability to stay healthy with the scientific tools we already have. He’s rolled back an order lowering drug costs for older Americans on Medicare, a quarter of whom have no retirement savings, and Medicaid, hurting poor folks and those with disabilities.

Trump also ended a Joe Biden order that lengthened enrollment periods for the Affordable Care Act, lowered premiums, extended postpartum Medicaid coverage and protected folks with pre-existing conditions.

And soon we’ll all be at the mercy of Kennedy, who was a heroin addict as a teenager, said he had a worm in his brain during his divorce proceeding so he couldn’t think straight, and has fought the use of vaccines that have been proven safe for millions of people, cutting back on myriad diseases over time.

The war against scientific progress is on folks, and many of us will be worse for it. What do you think?