Trump Suggests Decimating NIH to Give Military Even More Money

The Trump administration officially sent Congress its 2027 budget proposal on Friday, and while the largest story that emerged from the mammoth document was that the president is looking to increase defense spending over 40 percent to a staggering $1.5 trillion, there are plenty more budget adjustments to laugh/shudder/weep over.

Among the social and health programs Trump is looking to cut in order to fund his bloodlust is the National Institutes of Health, the government’s main medical research branch. NIH was one of the main targets of DOGE cuts back in 2025; now Trump’s budget proposal looks to wrest $5 billion more from the department, alleging that NIH “broke the trust of the American people with wasteful spending, misleading information, risky research, and the promotion of dangerous ideologies that undermine public health.”

The NIH has made major breakthroughs in the fields of vaccines, heart disease, and AIDS, and to date 174 researchers funded by the agency have won Nobel Prizes. But because of its willingness to fund research into LGBTQ and minority health, and its unwillingness to break with science to back MAGA’s most ridiculous medical claims, the agency has become a bugbear of the president.

Among the examples the Trump administration cites for its claim that the NIH is “wasteful and radical” are studies on how HIV risk affects the mental and sexual health of young men, and how sexually transmitted infections can occur between transgender women.

Reasoning for the cuts gets downright conspiratorial when the document begins rambling about NIH “funneling millions of dollars to EcoHealth Alliance, which funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the likely source of the COVID-19 pandemic, under Dr. Anthony Fauci.”

Studies conducted from both within and outside the NIH have looked into the “lab-leak theory” and found that while the Chinese government has been less than transparent about sharing genome data from the earliest contractors of Covid, there is little credible evidence supporting the idea that Chinese scientists accidentally created the virus, and that it is more likely Covid emerged from general contact between animals and humans.

“The weight of available evidence … suggests zoonotic spillover … either directly from bats or through an intermediate host,” the WHO concluded last year.

That hasn’t stopped the White House from running with the more inflammatory theory since the end of Trump’s first term, using it to justify racism against Chinese Americans and lend legitimacy to other unfounded conspiracies (cough, Chinese election fraud, cough).

Congress still holds the power of the purse, and tweaks to Trump’s budget proposal are undoubtedly coming. The bad news is that Republicans still command majorities in the House and the Senate, and will aim to pass the 2027 budget before the midterms, which look increasingly favorable for many Democrat challengers. Anything could happen, but for now, it’s looking grim for America’s premier medical research department.