{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.baldwin.senate.gov/news/press-releases/watch-baldwin-presses-national-institutes-of-health-director-on-trump-admins-cuts-to-lifesaving-research", "WATCH: Baldwin Presses National Institutes of Health Director on Trump Admin\u2019s Cuts to Lifesaving Research", "2026-05-21", "2026", "2026-05", "Democrat", "Senate", "WI", "Tammy Baldwin", "B001230", "www.baldwin.senate.gov", "baldwin", "https://www.baldwin.senate.gov/news/press-releases", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 Today, U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), ranking member on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education questioned National Institutes for Health (NIH) Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on President Donald Trump\u2019s Fiscal Year 2027 budget, which cuts nearly $6 billion from the agency tasked with supporting lifesaving research for cures to cancer, ALS, Alzheimer\u2019s, and other diseases. She also pressed the NIH Director on the Trump Administration terminating over 5,000 NIH grants, slashing nearly a quarter of the NIH workforce, and cutting the number of new research grants by more than 2,000, or 22 percent.\n\n\u201cI can\u2019t comprehend why this administration is so hell bent on sabotaging the life-saving research that NIH supports, but they are doing so at every turn. What concerns me most is that this damage will take years, if not decades, to undo,\u201d said Senator Baldwin. \u201cThe cost is so much higher than lab closures, canceled clinical trials, or young investigators leaving science. The cost will be fewer treatments and cures, lost loved ones, and an entire generation of scientists gone.\u201d\n\nAt the hearing, Senator Baldwin pressed Dr. Bhattacharya on the Trump Administration cutting the number of new grants meant to find cures to serious illnesses and diseases that the NIH funds by more than 2,000 in Fiscal Year 2025. This dramatic drop in new research grants can largely be attributed to the Trump Administration\u2019s multi-year funding scheme that locked away $2.5 billion for future years that could have been used to support more than 2,000 research grants this year in our race to find cures for cancer, ALS, Alzheimer\u2019s disease, and other devastating diseases. Senator Baldwin also highlighted how Institute and Center leadership vacancies across NIH are threatening Americans\u2019 health, including at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in the midst of an emerging Ebola outbreak.\n\nSenator Baldwin also raised concerns about the influx of politics into grantmaking decisions at NIH and the shifting criteria for awarding grants that put politics before science. Despite Senator Baldwin working to increase NIH\u2019s budget by $415 million for Fiscal Year 2026, the White House delayed getting that money out the door and left NIH unable to fund research for 40 days. This slow walking, combined with staffing cuts and Trump\u2019s multi-year funding scheme, means that NIH will award thousands fewer research grants this year; the fewest research grants it has awarded any year since 2017.\n\nA full video of Senator Baldwin\u2019s opening statement is available here.\n\n###", 1, "2026-05-22T06:27:39Z", "2026-05-22T06:29:18Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.baldwin.senate.gov/news/press-releases/watch-baldwin-presses-national-institutes-of-health-director-on-trump-admins-cuts-to-lifesaving-research"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.8539492264389992, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}