National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, fielded questions from lawmakers May 21 during a Senate appropriations subcommittee hearing on the institute’s proposed budget.
The roughly hour-and-a-half hearing before the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies focused on President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2027 budget request for the NIH.
Three things to know:
1. During her opening statement, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., said the acting director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was scheduled to testify but stepped down from his role, and that other top NIAID leaders have reportedly been “reassigned and forced out of their positions.”
Jeffery Taubenberger, MD, PhD, has served as acting director since April 2025, according to his LinkedIn profile.
“In the midst of an emerging Ebola outbreak, we have a leadership vacuum at the world’s premier infectious disease institute, and across our health agencies,” Ms. Baldwin said.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said she had been told that at least eight of the top 10 officials at NIAID are no longer in their roles, including the institute’s top allergy and immunology scientist of nearly 30 years, and its microbiology and infectious disease director.
Dr. Bhattacharya said the individuals are still with the NIH but have shifted roles as the institute reprioritizes around diseases such as hantavirus and Ebola, and around allergy and immunology.
“That shift means that we need some new leadership,” he said. “The folks you’re talking about are still at the NIH, but they’ve been assigned to places where they can help with the changed mission of the NIAID to focus on infectious diseases and on allergy immunology.”
2. Ms. Baldwin said a multi-year funding policy locked up $2.5 billion that could have funded more than 2,000 additional grants. She said an Office of Management and Budget policy requiring NIH to fund the entire cost of multi-year grants up front led the agency to spend $2.5 billion more on multi-year funded grants in fiscal 2025 than in 2024.
The result, she said, was 22% fewer new research grants overall. The National Cancer Institute funded 334, or 21%, fewer new research grants, and the National Institute on Aging — the primary funder of Alzheimer’s disease research — funded 438, or 33%, fewer grants.
Asked later whether he supports the administration’s proposed $6 billion cut to NIH, Dr. Bhattacharya said his role is to ensure “colleagues have the resources they need to fund the best biomedical research in this country” and that he is “grateful to work with Congress and the administration to make sure that’s possible.”
3. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, pressed Dr. Bhattacharya on a proposed 15% cap on indirect research costs. Ms. Collins said the administration’s budget request again proposes the across-the-board cap after Congress blocked a similar proposal last year, and that it would “negatively affect cutting-edge research happening at universities, nonprofit laboratories, medical centers around the country.”
Dr. Bhattacharya proposed an alternative: decoupling facilities funding from grant competition to allow institutions outside the top 20 — which currently receive about one-third of NIH facilities support — to compete more openly.
“NIH is like seed money for these places,” he said. “Once we invest, you get other foundations investing as well.”Becker’s has reached out to HHS to confirm whether Dr. Taubenberger resigned and will update this story if more information becomes available.
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