Congressional forecaster says Trump health research cuts would lead to fewer new drugs
The Trump administration's 2026 budget proposal includes deep cuts for scientific research, including $18 billion in cuts from the NIH's funding, a 40% reduction.
In a letter responding to a request from congressional Democrats, CBO Director Phillip Swagel said the nonpartisan agency estimates a hypothetical 10% cut in the NIH's funding of preclinical research would reduce the number of drug candidates for phase 1 clinical trials over 30 years, starting with one fewer drug in the first decade, nine in the second, and 20 in the third.
"CBO estimated that a reduction in the NIH's funding of external preclinical research would ultimately decrease the number of new drugs coming to market by roughly 4.5 percent, or about 2 drugs per year," the letter said.
Preclinical research is the earliest stage of drug development, so the effects of funding cuts take longer to kick in.
CBO expects cuts to clinical trials, in which drugs are further along in development, to also reduce the number of new drugs and to take effect sooner, but did not provide an analysis.
Congressional Democrats had also asked CBO to analyze the implications of reducing NIH funding by 35%-38% but the office said it had not determined whether historical data could reliably be used to do so.
CBO said it was updating its drug development model to address congressional interest in additional budget scenarios.
Democrats also asked the CBO to analyze the effects of a nine-month increase in U.S. Food and Drug Administration review times of new drug applications. The Trump administration has carried out mass layoffs at the agency, initially firing 3,500 employees, though some have since been rehired.
CBO found such a delay would lead to three fewer drugs entering the market in the first decade, and 10 fewer in both the second and third decades.
Delays in reviews would probably affect drug development in additional ways that CBO did not assess, the office said.
The Trump administration is proposing a $6.8-billion budget request for the FDA in 2026, representing a cut of around 5.5%from this year.
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The Independent
6 minutes ago
- The Independent
‘You can literally pregame recess with these': Experts warn of caffeine pouches targeting teens
Last summer, a TikTok user shared a video responding to a commenter asking if 13-year-olds can use caffeine pouches. The pouches, which are placed between your cheeks and gums to absorb the stimulant directly, have become increasingly popular amongst teens. 'Yes, guys, you can literally pregame recess with these,' the video creator says, holding up a tin of LyvWel 'Cherry Blast' caffeine pouches. There are a lot of similar videos all over TikTok. 'Can a 13-year-old use or buy upper-deckies from the TikTok shop? Yeah, of course you can,' a different user said, referencing the popular online nickname for pouch products. 'These are literally just caffeine pouches.' There is no national age restriction on caffeine in the U.S., so anyone can purchase products that contain the stimulant. Caffeine use in kids can even result in a hospital trip, which is rare but on the rise. The number of children ages 11 to 14 who had to visit the emergency room due to a caffeine overdose doubled between 2017 and 2023, according to a November 2024 study. And experts are getting increasingly concerned about the impact of caffeine on children, and the marketing tactics that could expose kids to these products. Dr. Michael Garcia, an internal medicine doctor with a focus on nutrition at UCLA Health, told The Independent that 'less is more' when it comes to caffeine for adolescents. Long-term use among teens can increase blood pressure, worsen anxiety and impact sleep, he explained. 'We know caffeine is one of those things our body can develop tolerance to,' Garcia said. 'So little by little, maybe use increases as that tolerance develops. And it's like any other stimulant or substance that gives us some sort of immediate effect, we then depend on it ... long-term.' The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests 100mg as the upper limit for kids 12-18, which is about the equivalent of a cup of drip coffee, about two cans of Diet Coke, or one energy drink. There are several other companies that sell caffeine pouches, including Deckiez, Rebel Pouches, and Wip, a caffeine pouch start-up founded by Richard Mumby, a strategic investor and marketing executive who worked with the e-cigarette company Juul. Different brands have different amounts of caffeine: many of LyvWel's pouches contain 56mg per pouch, which is roughly equivalent to a can of soda. Deckiez sells pouches with 40mg and 50mg of caffeine. Wip sells products with 100mg and 200mg of caffeine per pouch, with 15 pouches per package. Wip's Instagram features influencers over 18 promoting the products while doing athletic activities, including surfing, skateboarding and weightlifting. Rebel Pouches' Instagram shows men playing golf, softball and running, amongst other sports. Deckiez, founded by a teenager and his father, shows the now-college student founder talking with other young men, and shows people snowboarding and playing softball. LyvWel's focuses on discount prices and flavor variety. Dr. Robert Jackler, founder of the Stanford Research Into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising group, tells The Independent he's concerned social media marketing tactics could make teens eager to try the products, pointing out Wip's use of sports teens are particularly attracted to. 'These videos of the skateboarder doing his tricks…I mean, there may be 50-year-olds and 30-year-olds who are interested in that, but it clearly has a differential interest amongst young people,' he said. Dr. Bonnie Halpern-Felsher, a developmental psychologist at Stanford Medicine, also argued that using influencers and sporty imagery indicates it's 'clearly being marketed to young people.' 'You could talk about users on the way to the office, on the way to a business meeting…that would be much more obvious that you're targeting adults,' she said. 'There's nothing that I can see of the sort here. It is all fun and games.' However, caffeine pouch companies claim that they only aim their products to over-18s and, there's age-related warnings on the tin. Wip rejects any suggestion that they have advertised to underage children, with the company noting that its packaging is designed to appeal to adults and that hiring influencers is normal marketing practice. The product also includes age and usage recommendations, including a warning that says Wip is intended for people 18 and older. 'Wip has adopted an exceptionally proactive and responsible marketing approach, grounded in and exceeding official health authority guidelines,' the company said in a statement to The Independent. Deckiez founders Dean and Mike Herkenrath noted that their product was created 'as a healthier alternative to the huge spike in nicotine pouch use' and pointed out that caffeine has some health benefits for adults. For instance, studies have shown that adult coffee drinkers are less likely to develop heart failure, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine. 'Many of our customers have quit or heavily reduced their nicotine pouch consumption and we're very proud of that,' the Herkenraths said in a statement. 'Our social media content is indented for success minded young adults to ageless at heart seeking to energize their goals!' LyvWel said in a statement to The Independent that the TikTok creators encouraging 13-year-olds to try their caffeine pouches are not affiliated with the company, and appear to be using 'TikTok's Affiliate Program, which allows any user regardless of age to tag and promote TikTok shop products without brand involvement or approval.' The company says it has tried to report 'several inappropriate videos,' but some haven't been taken down. The Independent has contacted TikTok for comment. As interest in caffeine pouches grows, Dr. Grace Kong, a psychiatry professor at Yale Medicine who specializes in child and adolescent psychology, told The Independent that adolescents don't have all the tools they need to make informed decisions about caffeinated products, especially those they find on social media. 'There is an issue if we're targeting that kind of advertising or marketing to teens for those substances, because teens are still minors,' she told The Independent. 'There still needs to be protection in some way about the decision-making.' She noted that she thinks caffeine pouches are too similar in design to nicotine pouches, which could encourage young people to try them. 'It could be a gateway, or it could really normalize pouch use,' Kong said. There's also concern about how the caffeine is being delivered through these pouches, Dr. Taylor Argo, an adolescent medicine fellow at the University of Michigan, told The Independent. 'There are lots of blood vessels right there, and so that caffeine is being absorbed directly into the bloodstream…we hypothesize that when you put medicines directly into your mouth that way, or other substances, it's absorbed a little faster,' she said. The 'biggest risk factor' for teens when using high levels of caffeine is irregular heart rates, also known as cardiac arrhythmias, Argo said. 'I actually have not heard of any of my patients using these, and I care for teens every day…I do worry about the amount of caffeine that is in it and how it's being delivered,' she added. Garcia encourages parents to talk about caffeine products with their teens and learn why they might want to use them. 'I think as adults, we are always inclined to provide a solution, but I think there's a lot of value in listening,' he said.
The Independent
6 minutes ago
- The Independent
The Trump administration is using ‘fascist propaganda' to promote its mass deportation campaign, experts say
The Department of Homeland Security is accused of sharing thinly-veiled nativist propaganda on social media through art as it pursues a sweeping campaign of mass deportations. Throughout July, the X account of the department run by Kristi Noem posted a steady stream of paintings exemplifying a very particular version of the 'homeland.' That has included posting the 1872 work American Progress by John Gast, in which an ethereal Lady Liberty floats above the Western landscape, as white settlers advance across the frame with stage coaches and rail lines, while Native Americans and buffalo run to the margins. Another X post features the contemporary painting A Prayer for a New Life, by Morgan Weistling, a close-up of a white pioneer couple clutching a baby in the back of a covered wagon, along with the caption, ' Remember your Homeland's Heritage.' A third such post includes Morning Pledge, a nostalgic mid-20th century scene of kids in a small town walking towards an American flag, as painted by Thomas Kinkade. The creators and guardians of these works have expressed outrage over being drafted into DHS publicity — and history and politics experts have also raised concerns over this art being used as 'propaganda'. Weistling said he wasn't consulted prior to the Trump administration using his work. The Kinkade Family Foundation, meanwhile, said Morning Pledge was also being used without permission, perverted to 'promote division and xenophobia associated with the ideals of DHS.' The foundation told The Independent that Kinkade, who died in 2012, struggled in life with poverty as a child and substance abuse as an adult. He viewed his paintings, known for their soft, glowing light, as a way to 'imagine a different kind of world, where warmth, safety, and belonging are human rights for all.' Beyond the canvas, Kinkade helped raise millions for the poor, while his foundation has handed out thousands of therapeutic art kits, including in farmworker communities. 'That vision wasn't meant for a select few, but for everyone,' the foundation said in an email. 'Throughout his life, Thomas sought to respond to moments of hardship with compassion and solidarity, standing with communities made vulnerable.T o see his work used in ways that promote exclusion and division betrays the very heart of what he stood for.' The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that the agency 'honors artwork that celebrates America's heritage and history, and we are pleased that the media is highlighting our efforts to showcase these patriotic pieces.' 'If the media needs a history lesson on the brave men and women who blazed the trails and forged this Republic from the sweat of their brow, we are happy to send them a history textbook,' Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in the statement. 'This administration is unapologetically proud of American history and American heritage.' According to Richard White, a distinguished historian of the West and professor emeritus at Stanford University, DHS's use of works like American Progress is as ironic as it is revealing. The painting depicted a highly nostalgic, mythologized version of the country even at the moment it was created. In reality, instead of the peaceful scene, violence was everywhere, with the U.S. Army (not pictured in the painting) involved in violent, dispossessing wars with indigenous tribes across the West, and groups like the KKK carrying out racist terror campaigns against newly emancipated Black people after the U.S. Civil War. 'It's not about history,' White said of American Progress, but rather a 'mythic narrative' of America. 'The original picture erased the reality around it.' White suspects the Trump administration is using the painting now for a similar purpose. The historian lives in Los Angeles, where masked federal immigration agents and military troops spent weeks conducting dragnet immigration operations, an effort he compares to the Nazi regime's Gestapo secret police. 'The real problem is what's actually happening on the streets of Los Angeles and other cities,' he said. Journalist Spencer Ackerman, author of Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump, sees similar far-right currents in DHS's images, strains of nativism he argues have existed just below the surface at the department since its founding in 2002 after the 9/11 terror attacks. 'It was definitely a crypto-right wing move from the start after 9/11 to use a word like 'homeland' in particular in the context of security,' he told The Independent. Prior to this point, he said, the term 'homeland' was not in mainstream use in this way in the U.S. It had the ring of European-style nationalism (and worse) back then, a poor fit for a pluralist democracy in which most of the population, at some point in history, came from somewhere else. Trump's DHS, however, has taken this implicit ideology to the explicit extreme, Ackerman argued, using the tools of 'far-right internet culture' to provoke people by using jarring memes plus the 'classic fascist propaganda' of armed agents kicking in doors to arrest mostly non-white people. 'This is a turn. This is different,' he said. 'This is very racialized, very essentialized propaganda that DHS did not previously explicitly traffic in, even if this probably reflects the id of the Department of Homeland Security that whole time.' The administration's immigration PR efforts have extended beyond the DHS X account and its selection of pioneer paintings. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has earned the derisive nickname ' ICE Barbie ' from critics for her frequent photo-ops in cowboy oufits and combat-ready gear matching with the various agencies under her purview. Both Trump and Noem have featured in wartime-style recruiting posters urging viewers to 'Defend the Homeland, Join ICE Today,' as the administration offers $50,000 sign-on bonuses for new ICE officers. Trump has long leaned into a nostalgic aesthetic as a notable part of his politics. One of his final executive orders in 2020 involved a demand that all new federal buildings in Washington be built in the ' beautiful ' neo-classical style, with marble and columns meant to evoke the temples of ancient Greece and Rome, while his signature political slogan, 'Make America Great Again,' includes an unmistakable nod to a heroic past. Government officials have long trafficked in tropes and propaganda about disfavored groups, too, White said, pointing to the virulently racist popular depictions of the Japanese during WWII. What stands out in this present era, however, is the seeming commitment of whole government departments to producing such images. In time, however, White said even these purposely exclusionary images of national propaganda reveal their limitations. 'In myth, nothing ever changes,' he said. 'In history, things do change.'
The Independent
6 minutes ago
- The Independent
Trump critic turned ally Nancy Mace announces run for South Carolina governor
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) – a former critic of President Donald Trump who became one of his most outspoken defenders on Capitol Hill while also becoming one of the most virulent voices against transgender people – announced she would is running to be governor of South Carolina. Despite having a thin legislative record, Mace has largely built a name for herself for bombastic stunts such as pushing to ban Sarah McBride, the first openly transgender person elected to Congress, from using the women's restroom and voting to eject Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House. 'I don't answer to the establishment,' she said during her speech. 'I don't know those in the back room a single thing. I answer to the people.' Mace made her announcement at the Citadel, South Carolina's military college, where she became the first woman to graduate. That came after she had initially dropped out of high school following being raped as a teenager, an ordeal she has publicly recounted. During her announcement, Mace mentioned a series of hardline policies, mostly focusing on immigration and cutting the state's income tax to zero in five years. 'They are all here, and we will work with ICE better than ever to ensure that anyone who is here illegally gets deported immediately, we will work with ICE in every respect,' she said of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 'If we need housing price we have it, if we need to have boots on the ground to help ICE, we will do it everything in our power, and we will not let another sanctuary share it dictate who gets to stay here when they're here illegally.' Unsurprisingly, Mace also said that she would oppose what she called the 'gender cult,' citing how she called out Clemson University for having 15 gender options. 'I hold the line on women and kids, Insanity and education by vetoing any funding to any college that pushes gender ideology and refuses to define what a woman is,' Mace said. 'If a school erases women, it erases its right to your tax dollars.' But Mace faces a crowded primary. Fellow Rep. Ralph Norman, who endorsed Nikki Haley during the 2024 preisdential primary, is also running. Another opponent is state attorney general Al Wilson, whom Mace accused on the House floor of ignoring her report of sexual assault, though Wilson said that Mace's report never made it to his office. Mace first came to Washington after serving in South Carolina's state legislature. In 2014, she staged a primary challenge to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) at the peak of the Tea Party movement. She later worked on the 2016 Trump campaign in the Palmetto State. In 2020, she beat former Democratic congressman Joe Cunningham in South Carolina's 1st district. Initially, after the January 6 riot, Mace criticized Trump and said she held him responsible for the riot, though she voted against impeaching him. That led to Trump endorsing her Republican primary opponent Katie Arrington in 2022. In response, Mace posted a video of herself infront of Trump Tower in New York. Mace initially billed herself as a moderate Republican who was part of a 'Caucus of One,' telling The Independent in 2023 that she was ' pro-baby, pro-gun, pro-pot, pro-gay.' She initially worked on legislation to decriminalize cannabis and voted with Democrats to legalize protections for same-sex and interracial married couples. But after her primary win, she moved significantly to the right. After initially voting for McCarthy as speaker, when former congressman Matt Gaetz filed a motion to vacate, Mace joined Gaetz and six other Republicans to eject McCarthy alongside every Democrat present at the time. Given many of her opponents within the GOP, Mace would likely need to win the support of the president. While Trump has not made an endorsement in the race yet, her announcement ad features Trump praising her.
