{"id":539,"date":"2025-06-13T18:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-13T18:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dangeladvertising.com\/?p=539"},"modified":"2025-06-16T17:27:20","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T17:27:20","slug":"nih-workers-risk-retaliation-by-openly-protesting-trump-policies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dangeladvertising.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/13\/nih-workers-risk-retaliation-by-openly-protesting-trump-policies\/","title":{"rendered":"NIH Workers Risk Retaliation by Openly Protesting Trump Policies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hundreds of workers at the National Institutes of Health \u2014 the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world \u2014 are openly protesting<\/a> the Trump administration\u2019s policies regarding the agency, saying the upheaval and harm being done to the institution is so great that they felt they had no choice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A letter<\/a> sent June 9 to agency director Jay Bhattacharya, signed by more than 300 current or former workers \u2014 including more than a quarter who signed their names publicly \u2014 is an extraordinary rebuke of the Trump administration\u2019s actions against the NIH this year. And that is no small list. They include terminating hundreds of grants<\/a> funding scientific and biomedical research across the country, firing more than 1,000 employees, tanking funding for young scientists<\/a>, and moving to end billions in funds to partner research institutions overseas, a move current and former NIH workers say will harm work to combat rare cancers and infectious diseases, among other research.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been soul-crushing,\u201d said one NIH worker who signed the letter, whom KFF Health News agreed not to name because they are not authorized to speak to the press and fear retaliation. \u201cThis matters for everyone who has ever been sick or knows anyone who has.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bhattacharya received the letter \u2014 which he said \u201chas some fundamental misconceptions about the policy directions the NIH has taken in recent months\u201d \u2014 a day before testifying in front of a Senate subcommittee about the Trump White House\u2019s budget proposal for the NIH. That proposal seeks to slash the agency\u2019s funding by 40% and collapse its 27 institutes and centers into eight. And it made for some fireworks with lawmakers, particularly Democrats, who lodged numerous complaints.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the Trump administration is doing to NIH right now is, frankly, catastrophic,\u201d Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said at the Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing June 10.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bhattacharya said that the budget \u201cis a collaboration\u201d with Congress, making it clear that the White House\u2019s proposal is far from set in stone. But he also took responsibility for specific actions the administration has taken without congressional involvement. Asked by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) who is making decisions to withhold grant funding, Bhattacharya said, \u201cI\u2019ve made those decisions\u201d to \u201cmove away from politicized science.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a town hall meeting with NIH employees in May, a recording of which KFF Health News obtained, Bhattacharya contended that certain NIH-supported research focused on racial and ethnic minorities is \u201cideological in nature, and that doesn\u2019t advance the health and well-being of anybody\u201d \u2014 a characterization that NIH workers dispute.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re actually doing the very thing that they say they\u2019re not doing,\u201d one worker said, \u201cand cutting whole areas of science that are critical to understanding how to improve patient care and patient outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019d like to speak with current and former personnel from the Department of Health and Human Services or its component agencies who believe the public should understand the impact of what\u2019s happening within the federal health bureaucracy. Please message KFF Health News on Signal at (415) 519-8778 or get in touch here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n

KFF Health News<\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF\u2014an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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This story can be republished for free (details<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hundreds of workers at the National Institutes of Health \u2014 the largest public funder of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeladvertising.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeladvertising.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeladvertising.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeladvertising.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeladvertising.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeladvertising.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":540,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeladvertising.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539\/revisions\/540"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeladvertising.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeladvertising.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeladvertising.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeladvertising.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}