There is nobody more insidious than US White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought when it comes to the bureaucratic evisceration of our national biomedical research program and public health infrastructure. Currently, Vought has proposed new rules that serve to:
Cut all grants referencing diversity, equity, and inclusion
Extend his authority to have regulatory and enforcement power
Require grant decisions to be approved by political censors who will only fund grants that “demonstrably” advance President Donald Trump’s political priorities
These things are all un-American and illegal. They will impact EVERYTHING, whether you are a scientist or not. However, they are also incredibly boring for most people. Who cares about federal grantmaking policy, especially when these are health and science grants. Haven’t you heard? NOBODY TRUSTS US ANYMORE!
Nobody has covered this with more authority and more engagingly than Elizabeth Ginexi, a former scientific program official at the National Institutes of Health. As Ginexi says in this video, she knew her time at NIH was done once “the DOGE boys” began roaming around Bethesda looking for programs to feed to the woodchipper.
Although DOGE has mercifully returned to their crypto and prediction markets, they were merely the harbingers of a far worse menace: Vought, the architect of Project 2025, whose life’s mission is to transform America from a thriving democracy into a fascist dictatorship with all taxpayer funds distributed to President Donald Trump and his fellow Christian nationalist oligarchs.
Ginexi described Vought’s methods as “death by a thousand paper cuts.” I have previously described him as the Adolf Eichmann of accountants when he attempted to fire most of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during last October’s government shutdown. Vought has thrown the kitchen sink at the entire federal budget to illegally claw back as many Congressionally appropriated funds as possible, including getting Trump to sign an Executive Order attempting to circumvent federal laws on awarding grants last summer:
Federal Grantmaking Gets a Christofascist Glow-Up
Yesterday’s Executive Order (EO), Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking, is simultaneously some of the most vicious, depraved, and illegal bullshit to be issued in the Trump administration’s War on Science, but also a very stupid self-own for America. If enacted, it will devastate science, health, and the economy. It is blatant theft of Congression…
Ginexi laid out comprehensively how Vought has systematically thrown the administrative kitchen sink at NIH and CDC, as well as a number of other federal agencies in other departments of the federal government. She has also raised the horrifying prospect that this will be extended to everything: grants to states for essential services and infrastructure like roads, bridges, schools, parks, libraries, police, firefighters, disaster response and recovery, nutritional support programs, as well as hospitals, ambulances, medical services, emergency responders, and health departments. This is trillions in taxpayer dollars, which normally go toward providing a return on Americans’ investment.
The prospect of the OMB Director, who is not empowered with regulatory authority, vastly overstepping the limitations of his office to illegally impound or destroy by relegation to eternal administrative purgatory is terrifying. At the same time, this is illegal. No OMB Director has ever attempted to extend his power to this extent.
You can do something about this and it’s pretty easy!
With 27 UNIHTED and The Save America Movement, we will be talking a lot more about how you can do something about this. Liz has written really helpful instructions for how YOU can get involved: leave a public comment! Federal law requires the government to collect and respond to comments. Therefore, personalized comments explaining how this would affect YOU and your family and community will have to be read. It gets harder for Vought to sneak this by Americans if thousands or millions of us object. It gets harder for our elected officials to enable or support it. Comments can be left anonymously, for those concerned about retaliation.
27 UNIHTED has great resources explaining the situation and guiding and empowering concerned Americans. You should also call your elected representative (regardless of their party) and let them know that it is unacceptable, unconstitutional, and antithetical to democracy for an unelected bureaucrat with a talent for consolidating authoritarian power via budget cuts and accounting trickery to override the interests of the Americans who pay his salary and whose money he is effectively stealing in defiance of the law. If they don’t do anything or support Vought’s efforts, vote them out of office.
As Science Chair of The Save America Movement, I will be doing my part to ensure that everyone who contributed to or enabled this disaster is recognized as the menace that they are, and removed from positions where they are ever being able to inflict this upon us again. That includes enablers in other countries. Including in Canada. Including at my own university and institution.
Vought depends on cowardice, complacence, and stupidity. There are far too many people who follow the path of least resistance. Even people who are supposed to be leaders, but have failed miserably. But with enough voices raised together, we can truly stand up for ourselves.
Nobody can help us but us. We are building a community and a coalition of Americans and people all around the world who will be harmed by this destructive administration. There is strength in numbers, and together we can build something better than what Vought is trying to destroy. Please join us.
Thank you Stacy Wentworth, M.D., PJ Schuster, Julie, RebeccaJ, Louise Pay, PhD | MCIPR, and many others for tuning into my live video with Elizabeth Ginexi! Please watch and COMMENT on the proposed OMB rule changes!
