{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.murray.senate.gov/senator-murray-on-trumps-latest-plan-to-politicize-lifesaving-nih-research/", "Senator Murray on Trump\u2019s Latest Plan to Politicize Lifesaving NIH Research", "2026-09-21", "2026", "2026-09", "Democrat", "Senate", "WA", "Patty Murray", "M001111", "www.murray.senate.gov", "murray", "https://www.murray.senate.gov/category/press-releases/", "scraper", "Washington, D.C. \u2014 Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, issued the following statement on President Trump\u2019s latest reported plans to issue an executive order to establish an external review committee empowered to veto any awards selected by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to receive funding.\n\n\u201cWhether lifesaving medical research gets funded or not should be determined by experts at the NIH\u2014not a panel of lackeys chosen by Donald Trump and Russ Vought. Under this scheme, a single political appointee could kill a cancer study or an Alzheimer\u2019s trial with no scientific reason at all.\n\n\u201cOnly one question should decide which research gets funded: is this good science that could save lives? Trump wants to answer a different question: does this help me settle a score? NIH funding doesn\u2019t belong to Donald Trump\u2014it belongs to the patients and families waiting on the next medical breakthrough.\n\n\u201cPresident Trump will stop at nothing to defund medical research that fundamentally changes the lives of patients and families across the country, and Republicans need to join us to put a stop to any effort by this administration to politicize what groundbreaking new treatments and cures we decide as a country to invest in\u2014whether that\u2019s an OMB rule or a new executive order.\n\n\u201cBreast cancer patients shouldn\u2019t be denied hope of a new lifesaving treatment because Russ Vought thinks women\u2019s health research is woke. Researchers at UW, Fred Hutch, and labs across Washington state and the country are working on cures that families are counting on; I\u2019m going to fight this corrupt heist every step of the way.\u201d\n\nSenator Murray has raised alarms and fought back against this administration\u2019s nonstop efforts to politicize, cut, and defund all manner of lifesaving medical research. She and her Democratic colleagues in Congress also successfully fought to secure language in the recently enacted continuing resolution (CR) to block the Office of Management and Budget\u2019s (OMB) attempt to politicize every aspect of the federal grantmaking process.\n\n###", 1, "2026-09-22T09:42:49Z", "2026-09-22T09:44:35Z"]], "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.murray.senate.gov/senator-murray-on-trumps-latest-plan-to-politicize-lifesaving-nih-research/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.9436327964067459, "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"}