STAT+: Senators push back on Trump’s proposed $18 billion NIH budget cut
NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya faced sharp questions Tuesday about the agency's proposed 2026 budget from Republican and Democratic senators.
National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya faced sharp questions on Tuesday from Republican and Democratic members of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee about the agency’s 2026 budget, with lawmakers struggling to reconcile his stated commitment to biomedical research with recent grant terminations, funding delays, and the Trump administration’s sweeping proposed spending cuts.
In a particularly tense moment, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said that Northwestern University has not received any NIH funding in the past 11 weeks, adding that more than 1,300 awards to the university have been terminated or frozen, including $9 million for clinical trials in colon, brain, and childhood cancers.
“For God’s sake, we lead the world in medical research. Why would we give up on it?” Durbin asked. “How are you able to reconcile these budget decisions with the reality of research and what it means to alleviate suffering and, more importantly, to give people hope?”
