'The Walls Are Collapsing': The View From Inside NIH as Shutdown Looms
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The public and Congressional attention focused on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in recent weeks is, obviously, understandable. There is an immediacy to an assault on the country's premier public health agency, in terms of access to vaccines, pandemic preparedness, and so on, that isn't necessarily replicated at other agencies even inside the Department of Health and Human Services. But that doesn't mean those other agencies aren't facing down similar absurdities and slower-moving crises.
"We can still largely do science, but the agency feels like the walls are collapsing," one source at at the National Institutes of Health told me. "Increasingly, I wonder whether we will be able to do science here in the future."
Another employee added: "In general things are terrible... It is hard coming to work every day feeling like I'm helping."
Amid that grim environment, the next existential fight is on the horizon. The latest looming government shutdown would arrive after September 30, and there are growing calls out there — in particular from elite Dem whisperer Ezra Klein, though plenty of others have made similar points — to force that outcome and make Republicans and the Trump administration own the crisis. It would, of course, have far-reaching effects across the government and the country, and as one NIH source said, that includes "big implications for science."
An anonymous group called the Science and Freedom Alliance, founded earlier this year by a group of NIH and NIH-funded scientists, agree. "That’s important for cancer research, for vaccines, for public health, and for US democracy," the group wrote on Monday. They want a "fighting CR" — continuing resolution — meaning a funding measure that includes more than just the funding.
Per a source involved in their organizing efforts, they want to "send a clear message to Senate Dems" that only such a CR is acceptable, one that "actually reins in Trump's authoritarian overreach and lawlessness — even if that means accepting a shutdown."
Another source at NIH agreed and told me they were "all for a shutdown." That's in spite of the fact that their life would be substantially altered as a result. "A shut down would be very disruptive to my personal work and personal finances but we are so far beyond what is permissible in a functioning society and government," they said.
This is the second chance that Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and the rest have had to make this sort of stand. "Personally I feel like part of me just broke when Schumer and the other Dem leadership decided to throw us to the wolves in the spring," one NIH employee told me. "I would like them to fight."
There are specifics to the funding battle that would make a big difference to how NIH operates. For example, the recent move (not, as one source pointed out to me, an actual written policy or mandate, but "a strong request" from Russell Vought's OMB, with the implication that retaliation would follow a failure to obey) to limit multi-year funding of grants — essentially a requirement to pay out longer awards all at once, with the effect of reducing the total number of grants that are awarded and limiting the amount of science that can get done. The National Cancer Institute, part of NIH, has estimated that following that rule will drop their grant success rate toward four percent. It is a cynical and underhanded end-around of Congressionally appropriated spending.
Meanwhile, the day-to-day existence at NIH continues to worsen, even as the shutdown looms. One employee said that while the immediate DOGE-related attacks earlier in the year have receded, taking much of the public outcry with them, that in no way means the country's (world's) premier biomedical research agency is somehow back to normal. There are still ongoing battles over billions of dollars in grant funding doled out from the agency every year — aside from administrative shenanigans like the multi-year approach — and even after the mass firings and induced retirements and so on, people continue to leave for one reason or another.
"At this point it feels like a lot of the damage is just attrition of people," a source said. In some cases, that attrition involves clinical staff, and when they are not replaced sometimes the research they were involved in is reassigned or is dropped entirely. Still, for those who made it through the gauntlet of the first six months — "I think a lot of the people remaining are pretty committed to trying to stay."
There are other ways to demoralize a staff. As part of the anti-remote-work crusade across the entire administration, a policy change was disseminated at the start of this month that amended an ad-hoc telework policy many employees were making use of. The new rule, as described in an email shared with me: supervisors can only approve up to two weeks or 80 hours of telework for an employee per year. People with good reason to work remotely — like those with major medical issues, say — are facing down impossible decisions.
Per one source: "The telework cap fucking sucks." NIH leadership, meanwhile, is pretending all is well. Back in late August, they circulated a message, shared with me, about the upcoming first-ever "NIH Community Day," which will be held on September 25 in conjunction with the NIH Relay Race. "This year's event promises to be a joyful celebration of our incredible community," the email read, and will be "a day filled with fun, laughter, and connection." On Monday, an NIH staffer told me that while opinions on the shutdown may vary, in terms of the day-to-day of it all "definitely the horror and pain are ubiquitous."
The budget fight, to some at NIH, represents an opportunity to actually make a dent. "Without a crystal ball to know how it will work out — I see negotiation as collaboration, as complicity," one employee told me. "I am looking for every opportunity to say no. And perhaps shutdown is the next way to say no."
