Vague, Tepid Signs of a Thaw at the National Institutes of Health

By Dave Levitan | April 15, 2025 | 2:53pm

Photo by Duane Lempke/Wikimedia Commons

Trump Administration NIH

Vague, Tepid Signs of a Thaw at the National Institutes of Health

It is not, it is important to start with, all good news. The National Institutes of Health, like all of the Department of Health and Human Services, is still reeling from the massive, corrosive reductions-in-force that came down on April 1. The fallout of that will be far-reaching and long-lasting, but in the short term there are at least a couple of positive signs that the last few months of stymie and stagnation at the country’s premier biomedical research institution may be easing somewhat.

In an update posted to an internal website on April 11 and viewed by Splinter, staff were told that government-issued purchase cards are now unfrozen and can be used. Purchasing is, however, “still limited to mission-critical items.” Official travel to scientific meetings and conferences can also resume, depending on approval from individual Institutes and Centers. The haphazard pause to NIH scientists’ ability to publish their research also appears to be diminishing, at least to some extent, with some reports from sources that long-delayed papers have started to receive approval.

Most Popular

And in what may be the happiest, if perhaps less impactful news, NIH staff have been freed from one of the Trump administration’s most inane demands. “NIH employees are no longer required to submit weekly emails to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) containing five bullets summarizing accomplishments from the previous week,” read an email from the NIH Executive Secretariat and viewed from multiple sources by Splinter. “Please disregard any future reminders or instructions on this directive from OPM or the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).” The message had at least a mildly salty air about it, noting that as an operating division of HHS, NIH can manage its own performance review processes.

Unfortunately, that rescinded dictat may not have spread beyond the NIH walls, even within HHS. A Food and Drug Administration employee told Splinter that no such reprieve had been granted last Thursday, when the NIH message went out, and as of Monday this week FDA staff were still required to submit their five bullets emails.

And again, it is not all good news in the post-RIF (well, post-first-RIF at least) NIH. In at least one building early this week, staff were warned about IT and computer “upgrades” that were ongoing, raising yet more possibility about potential monitoring of staff activity that has contributed to an overall chilling of federal employees’ speech. Also, a source said that a couple of people in leadership positions relating to grant funding may retire in the coming days, at least partially thanks to continued pressure to illegally pause grant funding to large recipients like Harvard and Columbia.

Meanwhile, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., continues to make his leathery, dangerous mark across his agency, spewing vaccine disinformation and various anti-science quackery that has inexplicably found its way atop the nation’s health agency. This is all going to get very dark, in a variety of ways, over the coming years; but the small, short-term upticks in productivity, of scientific activity, of some semblance of return-to-normalcy at NIH, are at least something to celebrate, if perhaps in small, short-term bursts.