To protect the nation’s leading health research agency from potential political meddling in the event that Donald Trump is elected in November, the Biden administration is putting new tripwires in place for him.
Just as Trump has proposed ideological agendas on vaccines and diversity programs, the White House is worried that he may attempt to do the same at the National Institutes of Health.
To prepare for a Trump administration, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has appointed a person to investigate allegations of political interference with agency business and has charged a soon-to-be-formed scientific integrity council with investigating such allegations. The Trump administration is aware that Trump has the option to abandon those plans, but they are betting that doing so will cause widespread public and Congressional outrage. Even Republicans who believe the National Institutes of Health (NIH) require a shakeup are likely to be hoped-for by the Biden administration as a means to rein back Trump.
An interview with Lyric Jorgenson, the NIH’s designated scientific integrity official, revealed that the agency is actively striving to prevent the “inappropriate” practice of altering science in order to further partisan agendas. “The public needs to be able to rely on NIH to “produce rigorous, trusted research to improve public health,” she said, emphasizing the crucial importance of the plan to safeguard the agency’s independence.
Apart from a director who is confirmed by the Senate, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has long been able to function mostly unencumbered by politics, despite the fact that it distributes more funds to health researchers than any other organization in the world, exceeding $40 billion annually.
After proposing hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19, Trump threatened to dismiss senior agency director Anthony Fauci and caused another to resign while he was president. In light of the GOP’s ire towards the public health bureaucracy’s pandemic recommendations, scientific groups that collaborate with the NIH are now concerned that Trump’s possible reelection could lead to more coordinated efforts to influence the agency’s judgments.
Aside from designating Jorgenson as the National Institutes of Health’s watchdog, the White House has ordered the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, two other health agencies involved in the COVID-19 pandemic, to enhance their scientific integrity plans. These plans should guarantee that research is thorough, objective, open, and trustworthy, and that impartial government officials are making these determinations.
Last month, the White House’s Office of Personnel Management issued regulations that will make it impossible for Trump or any president to remove job protections from public servants who are involved in policymaking. Trump had promoted this notion in the weeks leading up to the 2020 election.
We don’t know if it will work. Despite his silence on the matter, Trump has hinted that he may do away with the National Institutes of Health’s scientific integrity plan if he is elected president in November. Neither statute nor rule explicitly states it. Supporters of his administration see it as a way to avoid investigating scientists who have been infected with progressive ideology and the corrupt bureaucracy that is too friendly with its funders.
“The National Institutes of Health is ready for a major overhaul,” Roger Severino, a former Trump health secretary and current conservative think tanker at the Heritage Foundation, told AWN. The possibility of an executive order simplifying the process of firing federal employees and a restructure of agencies are both being considered, according to Severino.
“Soft power” is a good way to describe Biden’s attempt to protect the agency’s researchers, according to Elaine Kamarck, who fought with government employees while leading Vice President Al Gore’s push to make government agencies function more like corporations. Kamarck now heads the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution think tank.
“It could be a simple message to everyone: Let’s keep politics out of scientific agencies,” Kamarck stated. There is a precedence for intervening, or at least for suggesting that you should intervene, if Trump were to disregard that principle.
A maze of statutes
It is difficult to alter the established procedures of government agencies, as any former president can tell you.
The Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Veterans Affairs were influenced to function more like companies as a result of Al Gore’s efforts to reform the government during the Clinton administration. However, Gore refused to touch the regulations governing the civil service.
The efforts of former president George W. Bush to privatize government, restrict union negotiating rights, and institute performance-based compensation and disciplinary systems in the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security failed miserably.
A group of unions took legal action. Intervening were the courts. Bills to undo Bush’s policies were signed into law by his successor, Barack Obama.
If Trump attempted to remove civil service safeguards, according to policy experts, he would face yet another legal hurdle.
Legal challenges from those who would have their rights taken away would not be surprising, according to Jacqueline Simon, policy director for the nation’s largest federal employee union, the American Federation of Government Employees.
Joel Zinberg, who was Trump’s health policy advisor on the Council of Economic Advisers, says the president should not be surprised by the challenges he faces. This National Institutes of Health is deeply involved in politics. They wield considerable influence in the nation’s capital. Many times, the directors there approach Congress directly in order to secure funds.