On Monday, almost two dozen states suffered the administration of Trump and the National Institutes of Health to block $ 4 billion, a reduction in research financing, which according to scientists would cost thousands of jobs and research in the treatment of cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease and many other ailments arise.
Financing was to take care of Monday on Monday. General lawyers Massachusetts and 21 other states filed a lawsuit, arguing Trump’s administration plan to reduce general costs-known as “indirect costs”-a 79-year law, which regulates the method of establishing and managing regulations.
“Without a relief from NIH, the most newfangled work of these institutions over the treatment and treatment of human disease will stop” The lawsuit said.
At Capitol Hill, Senator Susan Collins from Maine, chairwoman of the Committee on the Affairs of the Chamber, definitely opposing what she called “this arbitrary cuts”. Mrs. Collins, a Republican, said that when she called President Trump’s candidate to the Secretary for Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to complain, he promised “to examine this initiative again” if she was confirmed.
The application is the latest of a number of processes that question Mr. Trump’s policy. Also on Monday, the federal referee on Rhode Island ordered Trump’s administration to “restore” the trillion of dollars in federal subsidies and loans, including Nih, which were frozen under a broad directive, which the president issued, and later he was slow, slow last month.
Scientists, medical researchers and public health officials felt siege since Trump became president. In addition to freezing dollars of subsidies and reducing general costs, the administration blocked the Center for Disease Control and Prevention before publishing scientific information about the threat of bird flu for people.
The claim submitted on Monday includes a change announced on Friday by NIH, in the formula that the government uses to determine the share of dollars of subsidies that can be allocated to general costs. These expenses include lighting, heating and maintenance of buildings, but also maintaining sophisticated equipment, which is too exorbitant for each individual laboratory to buy independently.
The plan would cost the University of California system hundreds of millions a year, said Dr. President of the System, Dr. Michael V. Drake.
“Cut, which is disastrous for countless Americans who depend on UC scientific progress to save lives and improve health care,” said Dr. Drake in a statement on Monday. “This is not only an attack on science, but a gigantic health magazine. We must oppose this harmful, wrong action. “
District officials are also afraid that cuts can harm their economies. Massachusetts boasts the “capital of medical research of the country,” said prosecutor general, Andrea Joy Campbell, Democrat, By announcing a suitAdding: “We will not allow Trump’s administration to illegally undermine our economy, cut our competitiveness or play politics with our public health.”
In recent years, Nih has awarded $ 4.5 billion in Massachusetts, including research on pancreatic cancer, hypertension and severe asthma. Nih also sent about $ 5 billion to Modern York. It is expected that the reduction will cost about $ 850 million, said the lawsuit.
Last year, Nih said $ 9 billion from $ 35 billion – or about 26 percent – distributed dollars of subsidies that have been transferred to general costs or indirect costs. Some academic institutions devote 50 percent or more dollars of subsidies to such costs. But the recent policy would limit these “intermediate measures” at 15 percent, saving $ 4 billion, said the administration.
Slashing indirect funds was the purpose of the goal of the 2025 project, a set of right -wing policy proposals presented by the Heritage Foundation as a plan of the second Trump administration. The project report found that the cuts “would support reduce the federal subsidy of leftist programs.”
Administrative officials and their allies have thrown indirect costs as a taxpayer at elite universities, whose gigantic equipment or external funds from private foundations can easily cover these costs.
“President Trump resigns from the Liberal Fund Dei Deans”, Katie Miller, a member of the effort led by Elon Musk to reduce the size of the federal government, He wrote on Friday in social media. “This reduces the scandalous price of Harvard by ~ USD 250 million per year.”
But Lawrence O. Gostin, an expert in the field of public health law at the University of Georgetown, said that many smaller academic institutions, including historically black universities and universities, have no additional funds to cover these costs, and would have to reduce medical examinations if medical results when the 15 -percentage hat remained intact.
A spokeswoman for Nih addressed questions to his home agency, the Health and Social Welfare Department, which is also called the defendant in the lawsuit. The department refused to comment, citing pending court disputes.
This is not the first time the Trump administration moved to reduce the funds. In 2017, during Mr. Trump’s first term, a similar proposal would reduce general payments to 10 percent of the prize, in accordance with Monday’s lawsuit. The effort broke down.
Then the Congress acted to “repel” the future effort and adopted the budget law, which forbade changes in fees from negotiated levels between federal officials and each research institution, in accordance with the trial.
People familiar with negotiations stated that these deliberations are elaborate, long matters that are associated with the costs of such items such as heating and staff bills, supported by the binders full of confirming documentation. The claim claims that the administration cannot make incorrect changes in the action that the Congress has taken. It was also found that the notification declared a change in the rate violated the Act on the administrative procedure in many ways.
The proposed changes were shocking at universities, which have already finalized budgets, assuming that the funds would come. The changes were announced on Friday and were to apply on Monday.
“There is simply no such gigantic discretionary money floating anywhere,” said Jeremy Berg, former director of the NIH division, who supervised general medical examinations. “The only thing the university could do was do less research and start releasing staff and lecturers. And it would be destructive. “
The biggest cutting effect would go to the University of California, which according to the lawsuit receives $ 2 billion of NIH research funds for many universities and cancer treatment centers. According to the process, the funds supported breakthrough research, including the invention of gene editions and first radiation treatment for cancer.
While the lawsuits against the Trump administration were usually dominated by you managed by democratic, this case also has places that recently favored Mr. Trump in the election.
These include North Karolina, who receives about $ 3.7 billion in NIH financing awarded to schools such as Duke, University of North Carolina and Wake Forest. Dr. Robert Lefkowitz, who is a professor of medicine in Duke and Nobel Prize winner in the field of chemistry, said in an interview at the weekend that “many research will have to stop” if the intersections pass.
“I can’t imagine a better utilize of taxpayers’ money,” he said about financing.
Michigan, the presidential swing, which Trump took in November, also sued, citing a probable loss of $ 181 million financing of the Michigan University itself. The claim stated that the university conducted 425 processes financed by NIH, focusing on several diseases, “including 161 processes aimed at saving life.”
The lawsuit also included the presidential battlefields in Arizona, Nevada and Wisconsin. According to the lawsuit, cutting would sculpt $ 65 million from the budget of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, which examines adult and pediatric adult cancer, diabetes and degenerative neurological diseases and other states.