The Human Cost of Frozen Funds

This is anything but “pro-life”

In an unprecedented move that plainly violates the separation of powers, President Trump tried unilaterally to usurp the power of the purse by freezing all federal grants and aid. Red and blue states alike depend on federal funds to meet residents’ basic needs, as do children dying of AIDS abroad. In the arena of public health, American doctors, scientists, and patients depending on research and clinical trials have been shoved aside in a mad power grab.

Fortunately, on Tuesday, a federal district court judge temporarily enjoined the action in response to a lawsuit brought by the progressive organization Democracy Forward. Subsequently, 23 state attorneys general brought a separate action to reverse the freeze.

This is not a close call. As constitutional lawyer Steve Vladeck points out, “[T]here is no guarantee that the spigot will be turned back on in two weeks; and in the interim, the withholding of so much money will almost certainly cause irreparable harm to at least some of the affected parties even if it’s fully restored at the end of the ‘pause.’” The move inarguably violates the 1978 Impoundment Control Act, putting at stake nothing less than our constitutional structure. “More than just getting there first, the impoundment issue also presents an even more fundamental question about the structure of our government—one that goes beyond even the enormous moral and practical implications of the birthright citizenship issue. If presidents can impound appropriated funds at any time and for any reason, then there’s not much point to having a legislature,” Vladeck notes.

What are the human implications of this? When the most anti-science, conspiracy obsessed president and his gang of nihilists cut off federal funding from entities such as the National Institutes of Health (for travel, medical research reviews, grants to scientists, etc.), real people suffer—especially when combined with a “pause” on any communications from the National Institutes of Health. The core mission of the NIH is to grant funds to external researchers; with the communications pause, “an unprecedented disruption of grant review panel meetings is provoking panic across the world of academic science,” the medical outlet STAT reported. “In interviews, more than two dozen researchers at institutions nationwide told STAT that the suddenness of the cancellations — in at least one case this week, a meeting was halted after it was underway — has cast many early-career scientists into limbo, unsure if they’ll have money to pay lab members’ salaries or run experiments.” When the dust settles, and after potentially fatal setbacks to patients, medical practitioners, and lifesaving research, we will see if fears “about the longer-term impact on medical and biotechnology innovation in the United States” were justified.

Amidst all the uncertainty, “It is very clear that one thing that is going on is a scrubbing of DEI,” said a senior academic researcher who relies on NIH funding and speaking without attribution for fear of reprisals. “Virtually any web page that has to do with NIH that references DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion, is gone.” The swift totality of this suppression has many scientists worried that when, and if, new grants are awarded, the administration’s allergy to “DEI”—now code for any circumstance in which racial inequities are acknowledged—will fundamentally reshape what research gets funded, with those already most marginalized in American healthcare bearing the cost.

To understand the ramifications, we spoke to a social scientist who works on opioid use and has been developing a study on the treatment needs of elderly Black residents of Detroit. The demographic focus is at the heart of their study’s goals; although there has been a reduction in opioid overdose rates in America overall, they explain, “we have rising overdose rates in the Black community. That is a problem. We have not sufficiently addressed it, and their rates show that we are not doing what we need to do. So what are we doing wrong? How can we do something better?” These are the kinds of research questions that save lives. And yet, the scientist—who declined to go on the record for fear of retribution—is now facing the prospect of rewriting their grant proposal without reference to race, lest it fall victim to the DEI purge.

Even temporary disruptions to the funding process can have significant consequences, warns Frederick Kowal, president of United University Professions (UUP), the nation’s largest higher education union. “The uncertainty caused by the current freeze on the NIH puts critical scientific research in jeopardy,” he told us. “A short interruption of just a couple of months can result in grants not being awarded to research labs carrying out vital research, resulting in researchers being laid off and research programs being derailed for months—if not years.”

A “communication pause” from an organization of 20,000 employees and 27 institutes is bad enough. A lasting cessation of funds would devastate basic research across the United States. “NIH-funded research has direct ramifications on human health—everything from aging to heart disease, to cancer,” Kowal continued. “All the new treatments for diseases that we’re bombarded with through the media, while developed by industry, are based on discoveries produced with federal research grant dollars.” This research is also conducted largely by researchers trained at federally-funded universities.

It is hard to see who could possibly benefit from these heavy-handed moves to constrain and defund our most vital public health institutions. American medical research, patients and their families, as well as the medical profession more generally will suffer as a result of this stunt.

Unless the courts permanently stop him, Trump’s power grab will leave the Constitution and our medical research programs in ruins.