Trump reportedly preparing order letting political board veto NIH research grants

Donald Trump is preparing to sign an executive order that would establish an external committee empowered to veto biomedical research grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The plan was reported by the Washington Post and Politico, citing sources familiar with a Friday meeting where senior White House officials accused the NIH of funding so-called "woke" initiatives at odds with Trump's political priorities.

The proposal for the new committee came from Russell Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), along with other administration officials. The planned board would reportedly include Vought and NIH director Jay Bhattacharya, and would be required to reach unanimous decisions on grant awards.

Break from standard practice

Such a committee would mark a departure from the NIH's traditional process of evaluating funding proposals on scientific merit. Bhattacharya has resisted cuts to federal research spending and on Friday defended the agency's existing grant-making process, while Vought has expressed a desire to reshape federal spending more broadly.

The reported move comes as the NIH, the world's largest public funder of biomedical research, faces a class-action lawsuit from researchers who allege the administration is hindering and terminating scientific grants to suppress viewpoints that conflict with the president's ideological agenda, in violation of the First Amendment.

Since Trump began his second term, billions of dollars in federal grants covering health, nutrition, environmental and disaster-relief research have been cut or frozen. The administration has reportedly flagged research proposals containing terms such as "equity," "racist," "gender" and "climate change" to obstruct their funding.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH, and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.