Democrats demand OMB rescind grant rule

Lawmakers raise alarms about NIH grant changes 

A group of House Democrats is calling on the Trump administration to rescind a sweeping new proposal to overhaul the federal grantmaking process that critics say would exert unprecedented political influence on scientific research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).  

“The damage of this obvious power grab by political leadership in the Trump Administration threatens to inflict severe harm on the nation’s biomedical research enterprise by usurping the critical role of scientific experts in the approval and funding of grants at NIH,” Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee wrote in a letter to NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya.    “We fear this rule will lead to fewer cures, fewer clinical trials, and more exposure to dangerous public health hazards.”  The letter was signed by Energy and Commerce ranking member Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), Health Subcommittee ranking member Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee ranking member Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.).   The proposed rule, rolled out with little fanfare late last month, would codify many policies the administration attempted through executive order and at the individual agency level. It would de-emphasize peer review, and give wide latitude to political appointees to decide what research will “advance the President’s policy priorities.”  The rule would ban research on diversity, equity and inclusion or gender as grant conditions, and would place a broad prohibition on international scientific collaborations.  “The proposed rule will inject partisanship into agency decisions at an unprecedented level, undermining your repeated promises to ‘depoliticize NIH,’” the Democrats wrote, saying the rule would give the Trump administration “license to align NIH spending with their........

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