Democrat Grill Nih leader in cuts: Who calls the shots?

When the Trump administration held the country's medical research financing apparatus in recent months, scientists and administrators of the National Institute of Health often wondered how much autonomy the director of the agency, Dr. Jay Bhattcharya, had.

After all, Elon Musk's signature cost-cutting project, efficiency of the government of Elon Musk, helped to cancel or delay research grants. Other projects fell victim to President Trump's allusion with universities about anti -Semitism. But in view of the opportunity to dispel the influence of NIH on Tuesday, Dr. Bhattacharya little to claim the perhaps rocky time in the many decades of financing research institutions of the agency of the agency.

Decisions for freezing the grants to Northwestern University “happened before my office,” said Dr. Bhattacharya the committee, members of the committee for the funds of the Senate.

He repeatedly said that a proposal to reduce the NIH budget by $ 18 billion, “a collaboration between the congress and the administration”, and declined to speak in detail about how the cuts would affect the agency.

And strives to limit the financing at universities for research effort-a paid step that is baked in the budget proposal of 2026 2026, said Dr. Bhattcharya: “I don't want to get involved”, citing ongoing legal disputes.

Several Democrats in the Committee said they were confused about who pulled the threads of the agency.

“I want to know who will hold back this financing?” demanded Senator Tammy Baldwin from Wisconsin, a democrat, proof that the NIH had distributed billions of dollars less than in the same period this year. “Are you it? Is it for a doge? Is it omb?” She added and referred to the Office for Management and Budget. “Who makes these decisions?”

Dr. Bhattacharya replied: “There are a number of decisions that have led to some of these scholars.” For example, he said that it was his call to move away from what he described as a “politicized science”, a term that he had used in the past to describe research in connection with questions of diversity and equity. However, he said that the restrictions on research financing in Harvard and other leading institutions were “together with the administration”.

Senator Dick Durbin from Illinois, another democrat, reacted strongly after Dr. Bhattacharya refused to take responsibility for the frozen research payments by the government on the northwest.

An email from a NIH official in mid-April, weeks after confirming Dr. Bhattcharya, the employees instructed not to grant grants to the northwest and several other universities and do not tell the institutions why their financing had been frozen.

“The money stops in her office,” Durbin told Dr. Bhattcharya. “Do not accuse any other person.”

The efforts of the Trump government to significantly reduce the expenditure of the agency next year were criticized by senators of both parties, including Senator Susan Collins from Maine, a Republican.

The proposed reduction is “so annoying,” she said to Dr. Bhattcharya. “Effective treatments and remedies would delay or prevent them from being developed for diseases such as Alzheimer's, cancer, type -1 diabetes.” The plans, she said, are at risk of “falling behind China”.

Dr. Bhattcharya said that NIH was obliged to research Alzheimer's and other diseases and that he would work with the legislator to satisfy the “health needs of all Americans”.

The director opened the door to an agreement between the Trump administration and the leading universities that would release their medical research financing, although he did not provide any details on the prospects for such an agreement or the arrival of such an agreement. “I am very hopeful that a resolution can be made with the universities where these subsidies were available,” he said.

In the past few months, the NIH has abruptly ended more than 1,300 grant prices and delayed the financing for more than 1,000 other projects. On Monday, numerous NIH employees signed their names in a letter in which these measures were taken on the basis of ideological preferences, and censored without research assistants, whereby research on topics such as health differences, covid, the health effects of climate change and sexual health effectively censored.

Dr. On Tuesday, Bhattcharya said that he had set up a process for scientists to make the funding cuts. The agency, he said, would examine an appeal within a few weeks.