Federal immigration authorities detained a woman seeking medical care at the National Institutes of Health’s flagship research hospital, according to an internal document and an NIH official briefed on the situation.
The woman, an existing patient, drew scrutiny at a security station to enter the campus of the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, when she handed over a state driver’s license that failed to meet new federal security ID standards.
That prompted NIH officials to check for warrants and discover she had an order for removal. They then called U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The woman was to receive care through the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, according to the official and the document. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees NIH, confirmed the detainment.
“We are grateful to NIH security for apprehending an illegal alien attempting to enter the NIH campus Thursday,” Andrew Nixon, the spokesman, said in a statement. “Like any taxpayer-funded service, NIH clinical trials are for people here legally, whether they be citizens or those with proper visas that allow them to participate in clinical trials and/or treatment at the NIH. We are grateful to our law enforcement partners for acting swiftly to protect patients and staff at NIH Clinical Center.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately return requests for comment.
The document and official did not have the woman’s name or the date of her detention. Details of the woman’s immigration history were not immediately available; immigration judges typically issue orders of removal after authorities present evidence that a noncitizen should be deported.
Maryland allows undocumented immigrants to receive driver’s licenses, although it’s unclear if the woman presented a Maryland license. Congress mandated that states implement Real ID, a set of security standards for driver’s licenses designed to limit forgeries. Real IDs, or other acceptable forms of identification such as passports, are needed to enter most federal buildings, according to DHS.
Hospitals have historically been considered sensitive locations off limits to immigration enforcement. When enforcement actions happen in these settings, they may deter people from seeking care, especially for people who are undocumented, immigrant advocates and health experts have said.
President Donald Trump has directed ICE to ramp up the detention and deportations of immigrants. In the early days of Trump’s second term, officials revoked a directive that had essentially prevented ICE from detaining immigrants around sensitive areas such as schools, hospitals and churches.
Matthew Lopas, director of state advocacy at the National Immigration Law Center, said incidents like the reported detention at NIH raise serious concerns about immigrant access to health care.
“Hospitals and clinics should be places of healing, not fear. This kind of enforcement does not just impact undocumented patients. It undermines public health for everyone,” said Lopas, whose organization published a guide for doctors and hospital administrators on how to protect patient rights when immigration authorities visit medical facilities.
Still, reports of ICE showing up at hospitals have been rare.
Last month, a nurses union and immigrant advocates raised concern about the presence of ICE agents who spent days at a Glendale, California, hospital seeking to detain a woman who had been hospitalized while in their custody. The woman had previously been ordered deported, DHS said.
Democratic members of Congress have introduced legislation that would largely limit immigration enforcement actions within 1,000 feet of places such as hospitals, schools and churches. But the measure is not likely to pass given Republican control of Congress.
“We need to ensure that everyone can access essential services without the threat of ICE enforcement looming over them,” the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Illinois), said in a statement Friday responding to the detainment at NIH.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/08/08/nih-clinical-center-ice-arrest
An executive order signed by President Donald Trump late Thursday aims to give political appointees power over the billions of dollars in grants awarded by federal agencies. Scientists say it threatens to undermine the process that has helped make the U.S. the world leader in research and development.
The order requires all federal agencies, including FEMA, the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, to appoint officials responsible for reviewing federal funding opportunities and grants, so that they “are consistent with agency priorities and the national interest.”
It also requires agencies to make it so that current and future federal grants can be terminated at any time — including during the grant period itself.
Agencies cannot announce new funding opportunities until the new protocols are in place, according to the order.
The Trump administration said these changes are part of an effort to “strengthen oversight” and “streamline agency grantmaking.” Scientists say the order will cripple America’s scientific engine by placing control over federal research funds in the hands of people who are influenced by politics and lack relevant expertise.
“This is taking political control of a once politically neutral mechanism for funding science in the U.S.,” said Joseph Bak-Coleman, a scientist studying group decision-making at the University of Washington.
The changes will delay grant review and approval, slowing “progress for cures and treatments that patients and families across the country urgently need,” said the Association of American Medical Colleges in a statement.
The administration has already terminated thousands of research grants at agencies like the NSF and NIH, including on topics like transgender health, vaccine hesitancy, misinformation and diversity, equity and inclusion.
The order could affect emergency relief grants doled out by FEMA, public safety initiatives funded by the Department of Justice and public health efforts supported by the Centers for Disease Control. Experts say the order is likely to be challenged in court.
The Trump administration has faced various legal setbacks in its efforts to implement sweeping deportations and immigration policies, with some of the judges issuing orders accusing officials of racism and unfavorable comparisons in dramatic opinions.
Judge Trina Thompson, a Biden appointee on the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, offered the latest lengthy opinion, aimed at the morals of Trump administration officials trying to end temporary immigration programs for foreign nationals.
Challenges to revoking TPS bring racism allegations by judges
In a 37-page opinion Thursday blocking the administration from ending Temporary Protected Status for Nepal, Honduras, and Nicaragua, she accused officials of “racial animus” based on their statements about criminal migrants.
“By stereotyping the TPS program and immigrants as invaders that are criminal, and by highlighting the need for migration management, [Homeland] Secretary [Kristi] Noem’s statements perpetuate the discriminatory belief that certain immigrant populations will replace the white population,” Thompson wrote in her opinion.
Thompson wrote in her rejection that she “shares” the “concern” of those suing the Trump administration regarding the president’s ability to end TPS at his discretion. The Biden-appointed judge added that her court “does not forget that this country has bartered with human lives” and included a lengthy footnote discussing the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
“The emancipation of slaves saw the same pattern, but in reverse. Many whites were uncomfortable with the idea of free non-white people in their communities, even if they had lived in the United States for generations,” Thompson wrote in her opinion. “Plaintiffs’ allegations echo these same traditions.”
Thompson also alleges that ending TPS for the three countries and requiring those who had the temporary status to return to their home country is the equivalent of freed slaves being removed from the U.S. and sent to Africa.
Earlier this year, Judge Edward Chen, an Obama appointee on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, blocked the Trump administration from ending TPS for Venezuela and accused the Trump administration of similar claims of racial animus in his 78-page opinion.
“Generalization of criminality to the Venezuelan TPS population as a whole is baseless and smacks of racism predicated on generalized false stereotypes,” Chen wrote in his March order.
The Trump administration’s official reasons for ending the Temporary Protected Status for the countries have been that the reasons outlined for initially granting TPS are no longer applicable, and conditions have improved.
Other decisions bring emotional responses
While many dramatic opinions from federal judges blocking the Trump administration’s policies have come in TPS lawsuits, judges have also made fiery accusations in other issues. A ruling by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Friday made another unfavorable comparison about the Trump administration’s policies.
Judge Jia Cobb, a Biden appointee on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, compared the president’s policies blocking the administration from rapidly deporting people who had previously been paroled into the country to the countries that illegal immigrants have fled in her order.
“This case’s underlying question, then, asks whether parolees who escaped oppression will have the chance to plead their case within a system of rules,” Cobb wrote. “Or, alternatively, will they be summarily removed from a country that, as they are swept up at checkpoints and outside courtrooms, often by plainclothes officers without explanation or charges … may look to them more and more like the countries from which they tried to escape?”
Among the various rulings against the Trump administration in district courts, a case regarding the administration’s cancellation of diversity, equity, and inclusion grants at the National Institutes of Health brought another dramatic racial discrimination claim.
“I’ve never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable,” U.S. District Judge William Young said in his ruling in June. “I’ve sat on this bench now for 40 years. I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this.”
While the Trump administration has faced dramatic and blistering opinions at lower district courts, it has racked up several wins on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket on various issues, including terminating TPS.
The Supreme Court’s order allowing the administration to proceed with various policies, including immigration policies, has typically been accompanied by fiery dissents from the liberal minority on the high court.
A comprehensive analysis of hundreds of lawsuits against Trump policies shows dozens of examples of defiance, delay and dishonesty, which experts say pose an unprecedented threat to the U.S. legal system.
President Donald Trump and his appointees have been accused of flouting courts in a third of the more than 160 lawsuits against the administration in which a judge has issued a substantive ruling, a Washington Post analysis has found, suggesting widespread noncompliance with America’s legal system.
Plaintiffs say Justice Department lawyers and the agencies they represent are snubbing rulings, providing false information, failing to turn over evidence, quietly working around court orders and inventing pretexts to carry out actions that have been blocked.
Judges appointed by presidents of both parties have often agreed. None have taken punitive action to try to force compliance, however, allowing the administration’s defiance of orders to go on for weeks or even months in some instances.
Outside legal analysts say courts typically are slow to begin contempt proceedings for noncompliance, especially while their rulings are under appeal. Judges also are likely to be concerned, analysts say, that the U.S. Marshals Service — whose director is appointed by the president — might not serve subpoenas or take recalcitrant government officials into custody if ordered to by the courts.
The allegations against the administration are crystallized in a whistleblower complaint filed to Congress late last month that accused Justice officials of ignoring court orders in immigration cases, presenting legal arguments with no basis in the law and misrepresenting facts. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor also chided the administration, writing that Trump officials had “openly flouted” a judge’s order not to deport migrants to a country where they did not have citizenship.
The Post examined 337 lawsuits filed against the administration since Trump returned to the White House and began a rapid-fire effort to reshape government programs and policy. As of mid-July, courts had ruled against the administration in 165 of the lawsuits. The Post found that the administration is accused of defying or frustrating court oversight in 57 of those cases — almost 35 percent.
Legal experts said the pattern of conduct is unprecedented for any presidential administration and threatens to undermine the judiciary’s role as a check on an executive branch asserting vast powers that test the boundaries of the law and Constitution. Immigration cases have emerged as the biggest flash point, but the administration has also repeatedly been accused of failing to comply in lawsuits involving cuts to federal funding and the workforce.
Trump officials deny defying court orders, even as they accuse those who have issued them of “judicial tyranny.” When the Supreme Court in June restricted the circumstances under which presidential policies could be halted nationwide while they are challenged in court, Trump hailed the ruling as halting a “colossal abuse of power.”
“We’ve seen a handful of radical left judges try to overrule the rightful powers of the president,” Trump said, falsely portraying the judges who have ruled against him as being solely Democrats.
His point was echoed Monday by White House spokesman Harrison Fields, who attacked judges who have ruled against the president as “leftist” and said the president’s attorneys “are working tirelessly to comply” with rulings. “If not for the leadership of the Supreme Court, the Judicial Branch would collapse into a kangaroo court,” Fields said in a statement.
Retired federal judge and former Watergate special prosecutor Paul Michel compared the situation to the summer of 1974, when the Supreme Court ordered President Richard M. Nixon to turn over Oval Office recordings as part of the Watergate investigation. Nixon initially refused, prompting fears of a constitutional crisis, but ultimately complied.
“The current challenge is even bigger and more complicated because it involves hundreds of actions, not one subpoena for a set of tapes,” Michel said. “We’re in new territory.”
Deportations and Defiance
Questions about whether the administration is defying judges have bubbled since early in Trump’s second term, when the Supreme Court said Trump must allow millions in already allocated foreign aid to flow. The questions intensified in several immigration cases, including high-profile showdowns over the wrongful deportation of an undocumented immigrant who came to the United States as a teenager and was raising a family in Maryland.
The Supreme Court ordered the government to “facilitate” Kilmar Abrego García’s return after officials admitted deporting him to a notorious prison in his native El Salvador despite a court order forbidding his removal to that country. Abrego remained there for almost two months, with the administration saying there was little it could do because he was under control of a foreign power.
In June, he was brought back to the United States in federal custody after prosecutors secured a grand jury indictment against him for human smuggling, based in large part on the testimony of a three-time felon who got leniency in exchange for cooperation. And recent filings in the case reveal that El Salvador told the United Nations that the U.S. retained control over prisoners sent there.
“Defendants have failed to respond in good faith, and their refusal to do so can only be viewed as willful and intentional noncompliance.” U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, on the government declining to identify officials involved in Kilmar Abrego García’s deportation.
Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of Abrego’s lawyers, said the events prove the administration was “playing games with the court all along.”
Aziz Huq, a University of Chicago law professor, said the case is “the sharpest example of a pattern that’s observed across many of the cases that we’ve seen being filed against the Trump administration, in which orders that come from lower courts are either being slow-walked or not being complied with in good faith.”
In another legal clash, Chief U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg found Trump officials engaged in “willful disregard” of his order to turn around deportation flights to El Salvador in mid-March after he issued a temporary restraining order against removing migrants under the Alien Enemies Act, which in the past had been used only in wartime.
A whistleblower complaint filed by fired Justice Department attorney Erez Reuveni alleges that Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove told staffers before the flights that a judge might try to block them — and that it might be necessary to tell a court “f— you” and ignore the order.
Bove, who has since been nominated by Trump for an appellate judgeship and is awaiting Senate confirmation, denies the allegations.
In May, U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher, a Trump appointee, opined that the government had “utterly disregarded” her order to facilitate the return of a Venezuelan man who was also wrongfully deported to El Salvador. Like Boasberg, who was appointed by Obama, she is exploring contempt proceedings.
Another federal judge found Trump officials violated his court order by attempting to send deportees to South Sudan without due process. In a fourth case, authorities deported a man shortly after an appeals court ruled he should remain in the U.S. while his immigration case played out. Trump officials said the removal was an error but have yet to return him.
One of the most glaring examples of noncompliance involves a program to provide legal representation to minors who arrived at the border alone, often fearing for their safety after fleeing countries racked by gang violence.
In April, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín, a Biden appointee, ordered the Trump administration to fund the program. The government delayed almost four weeks and moved to cancel a contract the judge had ordered restarted. While the money was held up, a 17-year-old was sent back to Honduras before he could meet with a lawyer.
Attorneys told the court that the teen probably could have won a reprieve with a simple legal filing. Alvaro Huerta, an attorney representing the plaintiffs in a suit over the funding cuts, said other minors might have suffered the same fate.
“Had they been complying with the temporary restraining order, this child would have been represented,” Huerta said.
Gaslighting the Court:
Another problematic case involves the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency created after the 2008 financial crisis to police unfair, abusive or deceptive practices by financial institutions.
A judge halted the administration’s plans to fire almost all CFPB employees, ruling the effort was unlawful. An appeals court said workers could be let go only if the bureau performed an “individualized” or “particularized” assessment. Four business days later, the Trump administration reported that it had carried out a “particularized assessment” of more than 1,400 employees — and began an even bigger round of layoffs.
CFPB employees said in court filings that the process was a sham directed by Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service. Employees said counsel for the White House Office of Management and Budget told them to brush off the court’s required particularized assessment and simply meet the layoff quota.
“All that mattered was the numbers,” said one declaration submitted to U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee.
Jackson halted the new firings, accusing the Trump administration of “dressing” its cuts in “new clothes.”
“There is reason to believe that the defendants … are thumbing their nose at both this Court and the Court of Appeals.” U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson on the government’s attempt to carry out firings at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau despite a court order blocking the move.
David Super, a Georgetown law professor, said the government has used the same legal maneuver in a number of cases. “They put out a directive that gets challenged,” Super said. “Then they do the same thing that the directive set out to do but say it’s on some other legal basis.”
He pointed to January, when OMB issued a memo freezing all federal grants and loans. Affected groups won an injunction. The White House quickly announced it was rescinding the memo but keeping the freeze in place.
Justice Department attorneys argued in legal filings that the government’s action rendered the injunction moot, but the judge said it appeared it had been done “simply to defeat the jurisdiction of the courts.”
“It appears that OMB sought to overcome a judicially imposed obstacle without actually ceasing the challenged conduct. The court can think of few things more disingenuous.” U.S. District Judge Loren L. AliKhan on the Trump administration arguing a court order blocking a freeze on federal grants was moot because it had rescinded a memo.
In another case, a judge blocked the administration from ending federal funds for programs that promote “gender ideology,” or the idea that someone might identify with a gender other than their birth sex, while the effort was challenged in court. The National Institutes of Health nevertheless slashed a grant for a doctor at Seattle Children’s Hospital who was developing a health education tool for transgender youth.
The plaintiffs complained it was a violation of the court order, but the NIH said the grant was being cut under a different authority. Whistleblowers came forward with documents showing that the administration had apparently carried out the cuts under the executive order that was at the center of the court case.
U.S. District Judge Lauren King, a Biden appointee, said the documents “have raised substantial questions” about whether the government violated her preliminary injunction and ordered officials to produce documents. The government eventually reinstated the grant.
In a different case, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee, was unsparing in her decision to place a hold on the Trump’s administration’s ban on transgender people serving in the military, saying the order was “soaked in animus.”
Then the government issued a new policy targeting troops who have symptoms of “gender dysphoria,” the term for people who feel a mismatch between their gender identity and birth sex, and asked Reyes to dissolve her order.
Reyes was stunned. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had made repeated public statements describing the policy as a ban on transgender troops. Hegseth had recently posted on X: “Pentagon says transgender troops are disqualified from service without an exemption.”
“I am not going to abide by government officials saying one thing to the public — what they really mean to the public — and coming in here to the court and telling me something different, like I’m an idiot,” the judge told the government’s lawyer. “The court is not going to be gaslit.”
Courts have traditionally assumed public officials, and the Justice Department in particular, are acting honestly, lawfully and in good faith. Since Trump returned to the White House, however, judges have increasingly questioned whether government lawyers are meeting that standard.
“The pattern of stuff we have … I haven’t seen before,” said Andrew C. McCarthy, a columnist for the conservative National Review and a former federal prosecutor. “The rules of the road are supposed to be you can tell a judge, ‘I can’t answer that for constitutional reasons,’ or you can tell the judge the truth.”
A Struggle for Accountability
While many judges have concluded that the Trump administration has defied court orders, only Boasberg has actively moved toward sanctioning the administration for its conduct. And he did so only after saying he had given the government “ample opportunity” to address its failure to return the deportation flights to El Salvador.
“The Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders — especially by officials of a coordinate branch who have sworn an oath to uphold it.” U.S. District Chief Judge James E. Boasberg, when moving to sanction the Trump administration.
The contempt proceedings he began were paused by an appeals court panel without explanation three months ago. The two judges who voted for the administrative stay were Trump appointees.
On Friday, the Trump administration brokered a deal with El Salvador and Venezuela to send the Venezuelan deportees at the heart of Boasberg’s case back to their homeland, further removing them from the reach of U.S. courts.
A contempt finding would allow the judge to impose fines, jail time or additional sanctions on officials to compel compliance.
In three other cases, judges have denied motions to hold Trump officials in contempt, but reiterated that the government must comply with a decision, or ordered the administration to turn over documents to determine whether it had violated a ruling. Judges are considering contempt proceedings in other cases as well.
Most lawsuits against the administration have been filed in federal court districts with a heavy concentration of judges appointed by Democratic presidents. The vast majority of judges who have found the administration defied court orders were appointed by Democrats, but judges selected by Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush have also found that officials failed to comply with orders. Most notably, at least two Trump picks have raised questions about whether officials have met their obligations to courts.
Legal experts said the slow pace of efforts to enforce court orders is not surprising. The judicial system moves methodically, and judges typically ratchet up efforts to gain compliance in small increments. They said there is also probably another factor at work that makes it especially difficult to hold the administration to account.
“The courts can’t enforce their own rulings — that has to be done by the executive branch,” said Michel, the former judge and Watergate special prosecutor.
He was referring to U.S. Marshals, the executive branch law enforcement personnel who carry out court orders related to contempt proceedings, whether that is serving subpoenas or arresting officials whom a judge has ordered jailed for not complying.
Former judges and other legal experts said judges might be calculating that a confrontation over contempt proceedings could result in the administration ordering marshals to defy the courts. That type of standoff could significantly undermine the authority of judges.
The Supreme Court’s June decision to scale back the ability of lower courts to issue nationwide injunctions, and the administration’s success at persuading the justices to overturn about a dozen temporary blocks on its agenda in recent months, might only embolden Trump officials to defy lower courts, several legal experts said.
Sotomayor echoed that concern in a recent dissent when she accused the high court of “rewarding lawlessness” by allowing Trump officials to deport migrants to countries that are not their homelands. The conservative majority gave the green light, she noted, after Trump officials twice carried out deportations despite lower court orders blocking the moves.
“This is not the first time the court closes its eyes to noncompliance, nor, I fear, will it be the last,” Sotomayor wrote. “Yet each time this court rewards noncompliance with discretionary relief, it further erodes respect for courts and for the rule of law.”
Two months after a federal court temporarily blocked Trump’s freeze on billions in congressionally approved foreign aid, an attorney for relief organizations said the government had taken “literally zero steps to allocate this money.”
Judge Amir Ali, a Biden appointee, has ordered the administration to explain what it is doing to comply with the order. Trump officials have said they will eventually release the funds, but aid groups worry the administration is simply trying to delay until the allocations expire in the fall.
Meanwhile, about 66,000 tons of food aid is in danger of rotting in warehouses, AIDS cases are forecast to spike in Africa and the government projected the cuts would result in 200,000 more cases of paralysis caused by polio each year. Already, children are dying unnecessarily in Sudan.
Such situations have prompted some former judges to do something most generally do not — speak out. More than two dozen retired judges appointed by Republican and Democratic presidents have formed the Article III Coalition to push back on attacks and misinformation about the courts.
Robert J. Cindrich, who helped found the group, said the country is not yet in a constitutional crisis but that the strain on the courts is immense. Citing the administration’s response to orders, as well as its attacks on judges and law firms, Cindrich said, “The judiciary is being put under siege.”
This month, Californians filled the streets of Los Angeles to peacefully demand justice for SEIU President David Huerta—who was violently detained by ICE during an immigration protest—and for so many hardworking immigrant families across our state. The response? Tear gas. Rubber bullets. National Guard troops unnecessarily deployed to flex federal muscle. And a United States senator literally wrestled to the ground for daring to ask basic questions.
This wasn’t just an overreaction. It was a message: fall in line—or face the consequences.
At the same time, in Washington, the Trump administration is dismantling the very systems that keep our families safe and healthy. They’re firing scientists, defunding cancer research, slashing Medicaid, and replacing trusted experts with conspiracy theorists. It’s not just policy failure. It’s a campaign of calculated neglect—and political retribution aimed at states like ours that dare to push back.
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In just six months, the Trump administration has launched a full-scale assault on these safeguards. They’ve gutted funding, laid off thousands of career scientists, and shuttered key public health teams—all while claiming these cuts are about “efficiency.”
Let’s be clear: this isn’t streamlining. It’s sabotage.
This administration didn’t just fire the experts tracking avian flu, which has now infected dozens of people in California and is spreading rapidly through livestock. They disbanded the FDA team investigating the lead-contaminated applesauce that poisoned more than 500 children. They cut NIH programs working to prevent cancer and Alzheimer’s. They even fired the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel—weeks after a measles outbreak, as pregnant women and children remain vulnerable to viruses like COVID-19—only to replace them with vaccine skeptics.
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A federal judge Monday ordered the National Institutes of Health to restore grants that the agency cut based on gender ideology or diversity, equity and inclusion, calling the move illegal.
District of Massachusetts Judge William Young told the attorneys that the case raises serious concerns about racial discrimination on the basis of health and said some evidence points to potential discrimination against women’s health.
“I’ve never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable,” Young said Monday afternoon. “I’ve sat on this bench now for 40 years. I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this.”
https://www.axios.com/local/boston/2025/06/16/nih-grants-ordered-restored
President Donald Trump has issued an executive order that allows the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to refuse healthcare to veterans based on their political beliefs and marital status, sparking fears that Democratic or single veterans could be denied medical services.
On January 30, Trump signed an executive order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” While its primary aim was to roll back federal protections for transgender people, it also brought about sweeping changes within the VA.
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Caplan expressed concern that under the new policies, doctors might ask patients inappropriate questions, such as whether they have attended a Trump rally or support the LGBTQ+ community. “These personal views are irrelevant to patient care. So, why should we risk denying anyone access to care for such reasons?” he questioned.
The VA, serving over 9 million vets through its extensive network of 170 hospitals and 1,000 clinics, has made sweeping changes to its policy by striking down shields against bias tied to political leanings, marital status, sexual preference, and country of origin. Its latest regulations now permit healthcare workers at VA institutions to refuse care for characteristics not covered by national laws.
https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/trump-executive-order-lets-va-1211769
In his confirmation hearings to lead the National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya pledged his openness to views that might conflict with his own. “Dissent,” he said, ”is the very essence of science.”
That commitment is being put to the test.
On Monday, scores of scientists at the agency sent their Trump-appointed leader a letter titled the Bethesda Declaration, challenging “policies that undermine the NIH mission, waste public resources, and harm the health of Americans and people across the globe.”
It says: “We dissent.”
In a capital where insiders often insist on anonymity to say such things publicly, 92 NIH researchers, program directors, branch chiefs and scientific review officers put their signatures on the letter — and their careers on the line. An additional 250 of their colleagues across the agency endorsed the declaration without using their names.
The letter, addressed to Bhattacharya, also was sent to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and members of Congress who oversee the NIH. White House spokesman Kush Desai defended the administration’s approach to federal research and said President Donald Trump is focused on restoring a “Gold Standard” of science, not “ideological activism.”
On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration announced plans to significantly curtail people’s access to Covid-19 vaccines. Under the new framework, outlined in an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine by FDA Commissioner Marty Makary and Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Director Vinay Prasad, routine approval of updated vaccines will be limited to the elderly and vulnerable only. Approval for the rest of the “healthy” population will require extensive, costly testing.
While Makary and Prasad claimed their policy “balances the need for evidence,” critics noted a number of problems with the plan right away. Some of the research demanded for broad approval of new Covid vaccines was infeasible and even unethical. There were no carve-outs for caregivers upon whom vulnerable people depend. The timing of the release appeared primed to usurp the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which makes vaccine recommendations.
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The success of those efforts may have contributed to Trump’s return to office after mismanaging the crisis during his first term. The president himself seems to think so. Last month, the White House replaced the informational covid.gov website with a new page promoting the speculative lab leak theory of the pandemic’s origins and featuring sections on the harms of lockdowns and mask mandates.
The FDA’s new guidance on Covid vaccines can be seen as an extension of this effort, using the imprimatur of the agency to validate misleading and false narratives promoted by the right about the Covid — namely that the vaccines are insufficiently tested with unknown effects and unsuited for young people. Indeed, the authors of the policy were themselves prolific spreaders of those narratives.
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The FDA commissioner role was the big prize, however. Serving under his ally, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. — a longtime anti-vaccine activist who called the Covid jab “the deadliest ever made” — Makary was bound to take a stab at the vaccines.
All of the signs were there. One of his first acts was to bring on another vaccine skeptic, Dr. Tracy Beth Høeg, a physical medicine doctor and epidemiologist who had worked in Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Health Department, as his special assistant. The pair had collaborated on a Brownstone project called the Norfolk Group, which crafted an outline for a congressional inquiry into the federal Covid response ahead of the subcommittee hearing. With Høeg on the team, Makary’s FDA held up the scheduled approval of the Novavax booster, eventually scaling it back and limiting it to the elderly and the vulnerable in a precursor to Tuesday’s policy announcement.
Earlier this month, Makary also brought Prasad into the agency as its top vaccine regulator. Prasad, like Makary, has a link to Brownstone and spent years criticizing the FDA over Covid jabs, hyping up safety concerns about rare side effects like myocarditis, questioning their efficacy and suggesting that the risk-benefit ratio disfavored approval.
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As The Wall Street Journal noted the previous month in an infographic, the bivalent doses did not need to undergo human testing for safety since the original omicron strain vaccines did. “The changes simply update proven shots,” the graphic explained. “The process is similar to the development of the annual flu shots, which are given without testing them in people.”
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Billions of doses have been given over the years. There has been extensive safety monitoring of the vaccines, which have saved millions of lives in the United States and prevented even more hospitalizations. The data shows they reduce Covid transmission and the odds of getting long Covid and offer robust protection against severe illness and death.
With the current leadership at FDA and HHS, the incentives are simply stacked against humane vaccine policy. The only question is how far the agency will go. Is this new guidance the start of a complete phase-out of the vaccines, and might other immunizations follow? Time will tell.
