Mother Jones reports:

The National Institutes of Health, the federal government’s leading medical research agency, came under attack by Project 2025 well before its architect, Russell Vought, was confirmed to Donald Trump’s second-term cabinet as head of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought’s pet project—the playbook for the Trump presidency—asserts that “funding for scientific research should not be controlled by a small group of highly paid and unaccountable insiders” and encourages “more modest federal funding through” NIH.

Last Friday, NIH announced that it would cap grants for “indirect” research costs—such as building-related and equipment expenses—at 15 percent, from a current average of around 30 percent. It’s far from the only health-related harm the Trump administration has brought about in less than a month: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., poised to take over the Department of Health and Human Services, is, of course, infamous for spreading vaccine disinformation, and cuts to the US Agency for International Development led to abrupt, damaging pauses in both HIV/AIDS research and medication distribution.

But some of those so-called insiders—that is, the NIH—funded research that helped scientists better understand cystic fibrosis, which led to Vertex Pharmaceuticals developing a cutting-edge treatment that Vought’s daughter Porter benefited from. In a 2021 Instagram post, Vought’s then-wife shared that the couple’s daughter had started Trikafta, a drug that has shown great promise in managing pulmonary issues associated with cystic fibrosis, which affects some 40,000 Americans. [Continue reading…]