Fed Update: COGR News Digest

Council on Governmental Relations (COGR)

6/4/25

  The Disappearing Funds for Vaccine Research (New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/06/04/health/trump-cuts-nih-grants-research.html

Some changes have been starkly visible, but the country’s medical grant-making machinery has also radically transformed outside the public eye, a New York Times analysis found. To understand the cuts, The Times trawled through detailed grant data from the National Institutes of Health, interviewed dozens of affected researchers and spoke to agency insiders who said that their government jobs have become unrecognizable.

6/3/25NIH NOT-OD-25-117

  Request for Information (RFI): Inviting Comments on the NIH Artificial Intelligence (AI) Strategy

NIH is developing an institute-wide AI strategy that charts a progression from today’s data-science-driven analytics through semi-autonomous AI agents to fully autonomous, self-documenting biomedical AI beings. To inform this effort, NIH invites public comment on themes, pillars, and specific actions that should shape the forthcoming NIH AI Strategic Plan and its early one-year action plan

6/3/25New York Times

  JD Vance Wanted to ‘Aggressively Attack’ American Universities. His Wish Has Been Trump’s Command.

Vice President JD Vance is the most florid member of the administration voicing this hatred of academia. Take, for example, the extraordinarily broad brush Vance used to describe institutions of higher learning in an  address  at the 2021 National Conservatism Convention: “Universities in our country are fundamentally corrupt and dedicated to deceit and lies, not to the truth,” Vance said, adding for good measure: “Universities do not pursue knowledge and truth. They pursue deceit and lies.”

6/2/25Reuters

  Harvard seeks end to US funding cuts, says national security, public health research in peril

Harvard University asked a federal judge on Monday to issue a summary judgment ruling to unfreeze $2.5 billion in funding blocked by President  Donald Trump 's administration, which Harvard said was illegal

6/2/25Washington Post

  DOGE vowed to make government more ‘efficient’ — but it’s doing the opposite

New procedures and requirements — some implemented in the name of improving operations — are slowing down federal agencies.

6/2/25Science

  National Academies, staggering from Trump cuts, on brink of dramatic downsizing

ast Saturday, the morning after a news article announced major job losses coming at the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), National Academy of Sciences President Marcia McNutt wrote an apologetic memo to employees. Her statement to STAT that  250 people could lose their positions  by summer’s end had come as news to the roughly 1100 NASEM staff. McNutt told staff “no decisions [have been] made” about the number of coming layoffs.

6/2/25Science

  Trump’s proposed budget details drastic cuts to biomedical research and global health

Documents released late last week are providing new details about the breadth and depth of the spending cuts the White House is asking Congress to make to public health and biomedical research programs in the 2026 fiscal year that begins on 1 October

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