The judge temporarily blocks trumps in the financing of medical research
On Monday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the National Institutes of Health from the reduction of research financing in 22 countries, which earned a complaint earlier a day, which argued that the plan would dodge studies on treatments for cancer, Alzheimer's, heart disease and a variety of other diseases .
The funding cuts announced late Friday should come into force on Monday. But the Attorney General of Massachusetts and 21 other countries sued. They argued that the plan of the Trump government, overnight costs of $ 4 billion to lower the “indirect costs”-against a 79-year-old law, which rules, as administrative authorities determine and manage regulations.
“Without facilitating NIHS, the latest work of these institutions will grind to healing and treatment of human diseases,” says the lawsuit.
The relief was granted on Monday evening. Richter Angel Kelley from the US district court for the District of Massachusetts granted a temporary injunction in which the 22 states submit a status report in 24 hours and again every two weeks to confirm the regular payment of the funds. The judge determined a hearing for February 21.
The submission is the youngest in a number of lawsuits who question President Trump's policy. Also on Monday, a federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump government to “restore” the dollars of federal grants and loans, including the NIH, “immediately” under a comprehensive guideline that the President granted last month.
The order fails states that have not joined the lawsuit that are still exposed to the funding cuts. This includes some countries that receive generous research awards, including Pennsylvania, which receives NIH funds of around 2.7 billion US dollars, and Alabama, which receives around 500 million dollars of agency agents. Georgia and Missouri were also not part of the lawsuit and each draws about 1 billion US dollars in the grants for medical studies.
On Monday at the Capitol Hill, the cuts of a prominent Republican, Senator Susan Collins from Maine, who also announced her support for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mr. Trump's election for health secretary, showed. Ms. Collins, the chairwoman of the Senate Committee, said that she called Mr. Kennedy to register her strong opposition to “these arbitrary cuts”, and he promised to “examine this initiative again” if this was confirmed .
Scientists, medical researchers and civil servants of public health have felt under siege since Mr. Trump became president. In addition to the freezing performance of scholarships and strengthening the overhead costs, the administration has blocked the centers for the control and prevention of diseases by publishing scientific information about the risk of bird flu for humans.
The lawsuit submitted on Monday included a change, which was announced by the NIH on Friday, in the formula that the government determines the proportion of scholarship dollars that can get into the overhead costs. These expenses include lighting, heating and building maintenance, but also the maintenance of demanding devices that are too expensive for each individual laboratory to buy yourself.
The plan would cost the University of California system hundreds of millions annually, said the system's president, Dr. Michael V. Drake.
“A cut of this size is for countless Americans who rely on the scientific progress of the UC to save lives and improve health care,” said Dr. Drake on Monday. “This is not only an attack on science, but also on the health of America. We have to imagine this harmful, misguided action. “
State officials are also concerned that the cuts could damage their economies and cost thousands of jobs. Massachusetts is proud to be the “medical research capital of the country”, the attorney general Andrea Joy Joy Campbell, a democrat, said in the announcement of the lawsuit: “We will not allow the Trump government to undermine our economy, hamstring -hamstring Our competitiveness or play policy with our public health. “
The NIH has granted research funds of 4.5 billion US dollars in Massachusett's research fund in Massachusett's research funds, including research on pancreatic cancer, high blood pressure and heavy asthma. The agency also sent around 5 billion US dollars to New York. The reduction is expected to cost the state around 850 million US dollars, according to the lawsuit.
Last year, according to the NIH, the NIH said, said 9 billion US dollars of 35 billion US dollars – or about 26 percent – of the scholarships in overhead or indirect costs. Some academic institutions dedicate 50 percent or more of their subsidy dollar for them. However, the new guideline would limit these “indirect funds” to 15 percent and save $ 4 billion, the administration said.
The Slashing Indirect Funds was a goal of Project 2025, a number of right political proposals from the Heritage Foundation as a blueprint for a second Trump management. The project report states that the cuts would “help to reduce the subsidization of the Federal Taxpayer of the Left”.
Administrative officers and their allies spent the indirect costs as taxpayers' advertising gender for elite universities, the large foundations of which could easily cover these costs.
“President Trump dismisses the slush fund of the liberal dei Dean,” wrote Katie Miller, member of the efforts conducted by Elon Musk to reduce the size of the federal government on Friday on social media. “This only lowers Harvard's outrageous price by ~ 250 million $/ year.”
Lawrence O. Gostin, an expert in public health law at Georgetown University, said that many smaller academic institutions, including historically black universities and universities, had no additional funds to cover these costs and have to attribute medical research if they 15 the percentage The upper limit remained intact.
A NIH spokeswoman referred questions to her mother's agency, the Ministry of Health and Human Services, which is also known as a defendant in the lawsuit. The department refused to comment, referring to the pending legal disputes.
This is not the first time that a Trump administration has reduced the funds. In 2017, during Mr. Trump's first term, a similar proposal would have reduced the overhead costs to 10 percent of the price amount on Monday. The effort had stalled.
The congress then acted to ward off future efforts and passed a budget presumption that prohibited the change in fees from the levels negotiated between federal civil servants and every research institution.
The lawsuit claims that the administration cannot make any indiscriminately changes to the measures that the congress has taken. In addition, the announcement was announced that the change in installments had violated the Administrative Procedure Act in various ways.
The universities that had already completed the budgets have affected the proposed changes, provided that the funds would arrive. The changes were announced on Friday and should be effective on Monday.
“There is simply not nearly as much discretionary money that hovers everywhere,” said Jeremy Berg, a former director of the NIH division who monitored general medical research. “The only thing that could do a university is less research and released employees and faculties. And it would be devastating. “
The biggest effect of the cuts would achieve the University of California system, which, according to the lawsuit, receives 2 billion US dollars at NIH research funds for numerous universities and cancer treatment centers. The funds have supported groundbreaking research there, including the invention of the gene processing and the first radiation treatment for cancer, according to the lawsuit.
While the lawsuits against the Trump government tend to be dominated by democratically guided states, this case also has places that Mr. Trump has preferred in the elections in recent times.
This includes North Carolina, who receive NIH research financing of around 3.7 billion US dollars for schools such as Duke, the University of North Carolina and Wake Forest.
Michigan, a swing state of the President, which Mr. Trump led in November, also sued a probable loss of $ 181 million to the financing of the University of Michigan. The lawsuit states that the University of 425 has organized NIH -financed exams on several diseases, including 161 exams for saving life “.
