Here’s an interesting little detail behind the headlines. The medical news website StatNews has a whole package of pieces out today about the new NIH policy restricting so-called “indirects” (see this post) to 15%. One of their pieces is about 22 states going to court today to block that new directive. Unsurprisingly the 22 states are all either blue states or ones that currently have Democratic governors or AGs. Again, no surprise. But as I discussed over the weekend those grants are very important not just to the University of Alabama but the State of Alabama generally. The state’s junior senator Katie Britt talked to local media over the weekend saying, albeit in the politest terms to President Trump, that it’s super important to keep these funds flowing and that she looks “forward to working with incoming HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to accomplish this vital mission.”
I only knew knew about Britt’s velvet pushback because of a tip from a TPM Reader. I’m pretty confident there are similar reports from other Senators and representatives in similar positions. As Philip Bump notes here, NIH funding in red states is more likely to go to colleges and universities than in blue states. But it’s the pattern I want to highlight: blue states going to the courts and red states (or at least their political stakeholders) trying to work directly with the administration. As I said, I don’t think this will survive as an across the board policy. There are too many pro-Trump or Trump-adjacent stakeholders affected. But it’s a view toward a different kind of politics or state we could be heading toward: cash and prizes for supporters and nothing for opponents.
There are different and important permutations to this model. We start with cash and prizes for red states and nothing for blue states. But if institutions in blue states declare their love for Trump maybe something can be worked out. These are powerful inducements for political subservience and compliance. I had a number of knowledgable observers tell me last night that that was the obvious next step.
We’ll have to see where and how this plays out. My understanding is that there are both strong administrative law arguments against this and, in addition to that, an additional statute forbidding it which I’m told was put in place after Trump tried something similar in his first term. Of course, the administration’s global strategy seems to be that laws restricting his use of his executive powers are all unconstitutional. This amounts to saying that the opponents have a strong case on the law, even with right-wing judges. But we need to see if the law still matters.
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