Just wondering if any of our state leaders have a reaction to this attack on our state’s economy.
Texas universities could lose hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds that support biomedical research if a Trump administration policy withstands legal battles. Some fear a new National Institutes of Health funding formula will endanger thousands of jobs and potentially jeopardize breakthroughs in everything from infectious diseases to chronic conditions.
The NIH said it planned to slash the rate at which federal grants can be spent on overhead for research, which includes costs like facility construction and maintenance. The federal agency wants to set the rate at 15%. Some Texas universities, hospitals and companies had negotiated a rate of more than 50% with NIH before Trump was sworn in for a new term last month. They expected to receive $444 million in support for the indirect costs of their research, records show.
NIH portrayed the new cap, announced Friday, as a way to be a good steward of taxpayer money. But the move has already drawn a lawsuit from 22 states. A federal judge on Monday blocked the rule from going into effect in those 22 states. Texas did not join the suit.
“This agency action will result in layoffs, suspension of clinical trials, disruption of ongoing research programs and laboratory programs,” the attorneys general wrote in court documents.
Some NIH grant recipients in Texas that stand to lose the most if this policy is implemented include a brain study at UNT Health Science Center ($3.4 million annually), support for MD Anderson Cancer Center ($3.3 million annually) and the Southwest National Primate Research Center ($2.7 million annually).
[…]
The Baylor College of Medicine is among the top NIH-funded institutions in Texas in 2023. Officials at others, including Texas A&M University and University of Houston systems, said they are still assessing the impact of the policy change.
“We do not yet know the specific financial and operational impacts to UH, however, we anticipate the losses to exceed $10 million,” UH spokesperson Shawn Lindsey said. “Our commitment to advancing scientific discovery and innovation remains steadfast. We will be developing strategies to mitigate the effects and will provide updates to our campus community as we navigate these unprecedented changes.”
On Monday, Daniel Jaffe, UT-Austin’s vice president for research, assured faculty the university will cover all the facilities and administrative costs associated with their ongoing research despite the NIH’s announcement.
“You may continue to make expenditures on NIH grants as before,” he wrote in an email, which also encouraged faculty to submit grant proposals.
UT-Austin has 230 active NIH grants and expected to receive $24 million in indirect cost support from NIH, records show. Under this change, that amount could be cut in half.
The dollar amounts aren’t that great, but the value the research has generated is tremendous. The good news is that the original restraining order, which had only applied to those 22 plaintiff states, has been expanded nationwide, so we get to freeload a little here. As folks like Josh Marshall have pointed out, these cuts do affect red states, as well as a lot of businesses, so the pushback was to be expected. One can only marvel at our state’s ability to shrug it off regardless.
That’s not the only game in town, of course, so here’s a brief roundup of headlines on how The Trump/Musk regime has been bad for Texas so far:
Rice University among Texas schools facing uncertainty on research funding amid federal DEI ban
30,000 tons of food stuck in Houston port after Trump halts foreign aid
UTEP tells its researchers to maintain focus despite NIH plans to cut funding
Fort Worth was selected for $1M federal environmental grant. City may never see the money
Trump’s aluminum tariffs pose new threat to San Antonio’s beleaguered craft brewers
I’m sure there’s more, but you get the idea.
Musk and Turnip are trying to sell all of these federal budget cuts as a savings to taxpayers, but that is just a big lie as usual. The fact is that in order to bypass the filibuster to pass a big tax cut for billionaires they have to cut the budget by a similar amount. So services to the people are going to be cut to give the super wealthy even more money to buy political power with, if the cowardly Republicans in Congress go along.
I’d say that spite may be a bigger factor than greed. Those scientists dare to contradict the orange god emperor on issues like climate change and public health.
When I moved here for graduate school, I soon developed a great sense of pride that so many people from all over the world wanted to come here to do science. This is the goose that lays platinum eggs, and the no-nothings in the GOP are sharpening the knives. Our cowardly Senators could use their leverage, could halt nominee confirmations until this DOGE nonsense is stopped, but I suppose pigs might start flying too.
The focus of science/tech and medical research will shift back to Blue states, which will fund it,
with state dollars, albeit on a lower level than the Feds.
What that means is that Houston and Texas are likely to lose many of the talented people who created the Austin tech boom and the Texas Medical Center. 40 years of painstaking recruitment of talent…..wiped out in 6 months.
And when theyre gone, theyre probably not going to come back. Theyll be in places that respect science and diversity, where women and LGBTs have access to healthcare , etc. Even if the funding comes back at some point in the future, they likely wont.