President Trump signed an executive order in October establishing a presidential task force on women's health and directing the NIH to create a Women's Health Division within an existing institute. The move echoes earlier efforts, including the 1993 NIH Revitalization Act under Clinton and a 2023 Biden initiative that sought $12 billion in congressional funding for women's health research but was not ultimately appropriated.
nature.com
· 2026-11-03
Voters go to the polls on 3 November in elections that could flip Republican control of the House and possibly the Senate. The outcome follows Trump-administration moves that cut thousands of research grants, reduced the federal science workforce, and sought greater political oversight of agencies like the NIH and NSF, while Congress has so far resisted proposed budget cuts exceeding 50% for the NSF.
nature.com
· 2026-10-29
At a board meeting overseeing the NIH Clinical Center Research Hospital, chair Jack Leslie spent six minutes criticizing Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over a ribbon-cutting event for a new vaccine injury clinic, which featured a panel of people claiming vaccine injuries. Hospital CEO Jonathan Green clarified that the NIH already studies vaccine safety and that Kennedy's clinic is simply a new treatment protocol, not an expansion of funding or space.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-10-23
Federal agencies are screening roughly 200 terms—including equity, climate change and gender—to review grants for alignment with the Trump administration's research priorities. The administration cut about $3 billion in grants in 2025, with roughly $1.4 billion from the NIH and NSF still frozen or cancelled, while USAID's closure eliminated about $25 billion in international research and aid funding. Scientists have responded by seeking private donations, crowdfunding, shifting research focus, or pursuing interdisciplinary collaborations to keep projects alive.
nature.com
· 2026-10-19
The Chan Zuckerberg Biohub announced a partnership with the Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health to invest $1.8 billion in generating biological datasets for AI research. Biohub stated the funding is meant to give researchers data that AI models can use to identify new approaches to preventing and treating diseases.
wsj.com
· 2026-10-07
According to reports from The Washington Post, New York Times and Politico, the White House is drafting an executive order that would let OMB Director Russell Vought approve or reject every grant awarded by the NIH. The move follows a meeting in which NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya reportedly failed to stop the effort, marking the latest attempt by Vought to steer the agency's funding decisions after earlier attempts to cut its budget and impose political criteria on grants were blocked by Congress and the courts.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-09-21
A Nature editorial argues that the US National Institutes of Health should not adopt simplistic bibliometric measures, such as citation counts or journal impact factors, to judge the value of research it funds. It warns that basing funding or hiring decisions on these numbers risks distorting scientific priorities and rewarding easily counted output over genuinely important work.
nature.com
· 2026-09-15
The NIH and Department of Defense have quietly confirmed a signed agreement, disclosed the Friday before a US holiday, that redirects part of the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases budget toward Pentagon research on pandemic flu, CBRN threats and emerging infectious diseases. The deal runs a decade, and while the exact dollar amount is unspecified, reports indicate the Pentagon sought roughly a third of relevant funding but was steered toward about 10 percent instead.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-09-08
A Microbiology Spectrum study found that lit Bunsen burners did not lower airborne bacterial contamination compared with unlit ones, and in some trials contamination near lit burners was even higher. Researchers seeded lab air with Gordonia rubripertincta bacteria and compared Petri dishes placed near lit versus unlit burners across several burner sizes, consistently finding no protective benefit from the flame.
nature.com
· 2026-09-07
Two NIH employees say the agency has signed an agreement with the Department of Defense to transfer research projects, currently valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars, from its infectious-diseases institute to military biodefence programs. The NIH is reportedly still selecting which projects to hand over and hopes to finalize the deal before the fiscal year ends in September, when certain funds would otherwise expire. NIH officials describe the move as separating civilian public-health work from defense-related priorities, while a former top HHS lawyer questions whether simply redirecting funds between agencies in this way is legally permissible.
nature.com
· 2026-09-04
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