Coming soon: Fewer cancer research grants
The National Cancer Institute has informed researchers that it's limiting the number of awards it gives out for the remainder of the fiscal year.
The agency updated its funding policy, citing the White House's budget cut proposal for next year and a new National Institutes of Health policy, which requires the agency to provide at least half of the remaining funding for research project grants up front.
That change 'reduces the number of competing awards NCI can fund in this fiscal year,' NCI said, adding, 'With these considerations, we expect to fund through the 4th percentile.'
Before the announcement, the NCI had been funding around the top 7th percentile of new grants, which is already a conservative funding rate.
Key context: Typically, NIH research grants are awarded for multiple years and funded incrementally. The change to forward-funding grants, also included in the White House budget proposal, would give grant recipients that money up front.
For example, instead of spreading a $1 million award over four annual payments of $250,000, the full amount would now be paid in the first year.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) has emerged as the most prominent critic of forward funding in Congress, which she says would result in even deeper cuts to the NIH than the 40 percent cut proposed by the White House.
'It means billions will effectively be put in escrow and won't actually be spent on research for a number of years to come,' Baldwin said during an NIH budget hearing last month.
NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya defended the White House proposal. 'In the long run, what it does is allow you to spend more money and have more flexibility for new research projects,' he said.
What's next: Unless Congress acts, the same policy is expected to continue when the new fiscal year starts on Oct. 1.
'What we're seeing now at NCI is a preview of what could happen next year if NIH continues this policy in FY26, but on an even larger scale,' Erik Fatemi, a principal at lobbying firm Cornerstone Government Affairs and former Democratic staffer on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee with authority over health care spending, told Erin.
'Even if overall funding remains flat, NIH would fund significantly fewer new grants than this year. That means fewer shots on goal, and fewer chances to uncover the next breakthrough for patients.'
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Authorities are investigating the cases of two women who became critically ill after receiving peptide injections, an alternative therapy promoted by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., at an anti-aging festival, ProPublica reports.
Share any thoughts, news, tips and feedback with Carmen Paun at cpaun@politico.com, Ruth Reader at rreader@politico.com, or Erin Schumaker at eschumaker@politico.com.
Want to share a tip securely? Message us on Signal: Dannyn516.70, CarmenP.82, RuthReader.02 or ErinSchumaker.01.
THE NEXT CURES
The psychedelic drug ibogaine could be a promising treatment for veterans who develop mental health problems following a traumatic brain injury, the findings of a new, small study suggest.
The Drug Enforcement Administration classifies ibogaine, a psychedelic drug derived from an African shrub, as a Schedule I drug with no currently acceptable medical use and a high risk of abuse. It can pose heart risks and has been linked to about two dozen deaths in recent decades.
Inside the study: Stanford Medicine researchers analyzed brain scans of 30 male veterans who experienced traumatic brain injuries after exposure to blasts or combat, and who had post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety disorder or alcohol-use disorder.
— Study participants received a combination of ibogaine and magnesium, which has heart-protective properties.
— Participants had brain scans before treatment, three and a half days afterward and again one month after treatment.
— Unlike some trials of psychedelic therapies being studied as mental health treatments, such as MDMA, participants didn't engage in talk therapy during treatment.
Results: Participants who saw improvements in executive functioning also tended to show an increase in a brain wave pattern known as theta rhythms on their brain scans.
Those with improved PTSD symptoms after treatment tended to have reduced complexity of activity in the brain's cortex. The improvements lasted a month after treatment, which is when the study ended.
Researchers suggest that stronger brain waves in the theta region might encourage cognitive flexibility and neuroplasticity, or the brain's ability to make new connections. Less complex brain activity might lower the heightened stress response associated with PTSD.
If they better understand those patterns, researchers think they might be able identify patients best suited for ibogaine treatment.
Even so: The study, published last week in Nature Mental Health, had limitations. In addition to being small, it was observational, meaning it can't determine cause and effect, and open-label without a control group, so participants knew they were getting the treatment.
More research, such as a randomized control trial, is needed to confirm the study's results.
Big picture: Last month, Texas' Republican governor, Greg Abbott, signed a law to put $50 million into clinical trials of ibogaine as a mental health treatment.
Other states are looking to Texas as an example, including Arizona, Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri and West Virginia, according to W. Bryan Hubbard, who spearheaded the Texas bill and is executive director of the American Ibogaine Initiative.
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Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag The Republican push in Texas, which comes at Trump's urging, is part of a broader effort by the GOP across the country to pad its razor-thin House majority to keep control of the chamber in the 2026 midterms, when the party in power traditionally faces political headwinds and loses seats. Trump and his political team are aiming to prevent what happened during his first term in the White House, when Democrats stormed back to grab the House majority in the 2018 midterms. While the Republican push in Texas to upend the current congressional maps doesn't face constitutional constraints, Newsom's path in California is much more complicated. The governor is pushing to hold a special election this year to get voter approval to undo the constitutional amendments that created the nonpartisan redistricting commission. A two-thirds majority vote in the Democrat-dominated California legislature as early as next week would be needed to hold the referendum. Democratic Party leaders are confident they'll have the votes to push the constitutional amendment and the new proposed congressional maps through the legislature. 'Here we are in open and plain sight before one vote is cast in the 2026 midterm election, and here [Trump] is once again trying to rig the system,' Newsom charged. Newsom said his plan is 'not complicated. We're doing this in reaction to a president of the United States that called a sitting governor in the state of Texas and said, 'Find me five seats.' We're doing it in reaction to that act.' 4 The proposed Congressional district map of California. California State Assembly The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) said 'Newsom's made it clear: he'll shred California's Constitution and trample over democracy — running a cynical, self-serving playbook where Californians are an afterthought, and power is the only priority.' 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Washington Post
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- Washington Post
Trump's aggressive push to take over DC policing may be a template for an approach in other cities
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'If our capital is dirty, our whole country is dirty, and they don't respect us.' He then upped the stakes by declaring federal control of the district's police department and naming an emergency chief. That set off alarms and prompted local officials to sue to stop the effort. 'I have never seen a single government action that would cause a greater threat to law and order than this dangerous directive,' Police Chief Pamela Smith said. On Friday, the Trump administration partially retreated from its effort to seize control of the Metropolitan Police Department when a judge, skeptical that the president had the authority to do what he tried to do, urged both sides to reach a compromise, which they did — at least for now. Trump's Justice Department agreed to leave Smith in control, while still intending to instruct her department on law enforcement practices. In a new memo, Attorney General Pam Bondi directed the force to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement regardless of any city law. In this heavily Democratic city, local officials and many citizens did not like the National Guard deployment. At the same time, they acknowledged the Republican president had the right to order it because of the federal government's unique powers in the district. But Trump's attempt to seize formal control of the police department, for the first time since D.C. gained a partial measure of autonomy in the Home Rule Act of 1973, was their red line. For sure, there have been times when the U.S. military has been deployed to American streets, but almost always in the face of a riot or a calamitous event like the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Trump's use of force was born of an emergency that he saw and city officials — and many others — did not. A stranger to nuance, Trump has used the language of emergency to justify much of what he's done: his deportations of foreigners, his tariffs, his short-term deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles, and now his aggressive intervention into Washington policing. Washington does have crime and endemic homelessness, like every city in the country. But there was nothing like an urban fire that the masses thought needed to be quelled. Violent crime is down , as it is in many U.S. cities. Washington is also a city about which most Americans feel ownership — or at least that they have a stake. More than 25 million of them visited in 2024, a record year, plus over 2 million people from abroad. It's where middle schoolers on field trips get to see what they learn about in class — and perhaps to dance to pop tunes with the man with the music player so often in front of the White House. Washington is part federal theme park, with its historic buildings and museums, and part downtown, where restaurants and lobbyists outnumber any corporate presence. Neighborhoods range from the places where Jeff Bezos set a record for a home purchase price to destitute streets in economically depressed areas that are also magnets for drugs and crime. In 1968, the capital was a city on fire with riots. Twenty years later, a murder spree and crack epidemic fed the sense of a place out of control. But over the last 30 years, the city's population and its collective wealth have swelled. Against that backdrop, Philadelphia's top prosecutor, District Attorney Larry Krasner , a Democrat, assailed Trump's moves in Washington. 'You're talking about an emergency, really?' Krasner said, as if speaking with the president. 'Or is it that you're talking about an emergency because you want to pretend everything is an emergency so that you can roll tanks?' In Washington, a coalition of activists called Not Above the Law denounced what they saw as just the latest step by Trump to seize levers of power he has no business grasping. 'The onslaught of lawlessness and autocratic activities has escalated,' said Lisa Gilbert, co-chair of the group and co-president of Public Citizen. 'The last two weeks should have crystallized for all Americans that Donald Trump will not stop until democracy is replaced by vindictive authoritarian rule.' Fifty miles northeast, in the nearest major city, Baltimore's Democratic mayor criticized what he saw as Trump's effort to distract the public from economic pain and 'America's falling standing in the world.' 'Every mayor and police chief in America works with our local federal agents to do great work — to go after gun traffickers, to go after violent organizations,' Brandon Scott said. 'How is taking them off of that job, sending them out to just patrol the street, making our country safer?' But the leader of the D.C. Police Union, Gregg Pemberton, endorsed Trump's intervention — while saying it should not become permanent. 'We stand with the president in recognizing that Washington, D.C., cannot continue on this trajectory,' Pemberton said. From his vantage point, 'Crime is out of control, and our officers are stretched beyond their limits.' The Home Rule Act lets a president invoke certain emergency powers over the police department for 30 days, after which Congress must decide whether to extend the period. Trump's attempt to use that provision stirred interest among some Republicans in Congress in giving him an even freer hand. Among them, Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee drafted a resolution that would eliminate the time limit on federal control. This, he told Fox News Digital, would 'give the president all the time and authority he needs to crush lawlessness, restore order, and reclaim our capital once and for all.' Which raises a question that Trump has robustly hinted at and others are wondering, too: If there is success in the district — at least, success in the president's eyes — what might that mean for other American cities he thinks need to be fixed? Where does — where could — the federal government go next? ___ Associated Press writer Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Trump's aggressive push to take over DC policing may be a template for an approach in other cities
Trump's aggressive push to take over DC policing may be a template for an approach in other cities WASHINGTON (AP) — The left sees President Donald Trump's attempted takeover of Washington law enforcement as part of a multifront march to autocracy — 'vindictive authoritarian rule,' as one activist put it — and as an extraordinary thing to do in rather ordinary times on the streets of the capital. To the right, it's a bold move to fracture the crust of Democratic urban bureaucracy and make D.C. a better place to live. Where that debate settles — if it ever does — may determine whether Washington, a symbol for America in all its granite glory, history, achievement, inequality and dysfunction, becomes a model under the imprint of Trump for how cities are policed, cleaned up and run, or ruined. Under the name of his Making D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force, Trump put some 800 National Guard troops on Washington streets this past week, declaring at the outset, 'Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals.' Grunge was also on his mind. 'If our capital is dirty, our whole country is dirty, and they don't respect us.' He then upped the stakes by declaring federal control of the district's police department and naming an emergency chief. That set off alarms and prompted local officials to sue to stop the effort. 'I have never seen a single government action that would cause a greater threat to law and order than this dangerous directive,' Police Chief Pamela Smith said. On Friday, the Trump administration partially retreated from its effort to seize control of the Metropolitan Police Department when a judge, skeptical that the president had the authority to do what he tried to do, urged both sides to reach a compromise, which they did — at least for now. Trump's Justice Department agreed to leave Smith in control, while still intending to instruct her department on law enforcement practices. In a new memo, Attorney General Pam Bondi directed the force to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement regardless of any city law. In this heavily Democratic city, local officials and many citizens did not like the National Guard deployment. At the same time, they acknowledged the Republican president had the right to order it because of the federal government's unique powers in the district. But Trump's attempt to seize formal control of the police department, for the first time since D.C. gained a partial measure of autonomy in the Home Rule Act of 1973, was their red line. When the feds stepped in For sure, there have been times when the U.S. military has been deployed to American streets, but almost always in the face of a riot or a calamitous event like the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Trump's use of force was born of an emergency that he saw and city officials — and many others — did not. A stranger to nuance, Trump has used the language of emergency to justify much of what he's done: his deportations of foreigners, his tariffs, his short-term deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles, and now his aggressive intervention into Washington policing. Washington does have crime and endemic homelessness, like every city in the country. But there was nothing like an urban fire that the masses thought needed to be quelled. Violent crime is down, as it is in many U.S. cities. Washington is also a city about which most Americans feel ownership — or at least that they have a stake. More than 25 million of them visited in 2024, a record year, plus over 2 million people from abroad. It's where middle schoolers on field trips get to see what they learn about in class — and perhaps to dance to pop tunes with the man with the music player so often in front of the White House. Washington is part federal theme park, with its historic buildings and museums, and part downtown, where restaurants and lobbyists outnumber any corporate presence. Neighborhoods range from the places where Jeff Bezos set a record for a home purchase price to destitute streets in economically depressed areas that are also magnets for drugs and crime. In 1968, the capital was a city on fire with riots. Twenty years later, a murder spree and crack epidemic fed the sense of a place out of control. But over the last 30 years, the city's population and its collective wealth have swelled. A cooked-up emergency? Against that backdrop, Philadelphia's top prosecutor, District Attorney Larry Krasner, a Democrat, assailed Trump's moves in Washington. 'You're talking about an emergency, really?' Krasner said, as if speaking with the president. 'Or is it that you're talking about an emergency because you want to pretend everything is an emergency so that you can roll tanks?" In Washington, a coalition of activists called Not Above the Law denounced what they saw as just the latest step by Trump to seize levers of power he has no business grasping. 'The onslaught of lawlessness and autocratic activities has escalated,' said Lisa Gilbert, co-chair of the group and co-president of Public Citizen. 'The last two weeks should have crystallized for all Americans that Donald Trump will not stop until democracy is replaced by vindictive authoritarian rule.' Fifty miles northeast, in the nearest major city, Baltimore's Democratic mayor criticized what he saw as Trump's effort to distract the public from economic pain and 'America's falling standing in the world.' 'Every mayor and police chief in America works with our local federal agents to do great work — to go after gun traffickers, to go after violent organizations,' Brandon Scott said. 'How is taking them off of that job, sending them out to just patrol the street, making our country safer?' But the leader of the D.C. Police Union, Gregg Pemberton, endorsed Trump's intervention — while saying it should not become permanent. 'We stand with the president in recognizing that Washington, D.C., cannot continue on this trajectory,' Pemberton said. From his vantage point, 'Crime is out of control, and our officers are stretched beyond their limits.' The Home Rule Act lets a president invoke certain emergency powers over the police department for 30 days, after which Congress must decide whether to extend the period. Trump's attempt to use that provision stirred interest among some Republicans in Congress in giving him an even freer hand. Among them, Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee drafted a resolution that would eliminate the time limit on federal control. This, he told Fox News Digital, would 'give the president all the time and authority he needs to crush lawlessness, restore order, and reclaim our capital once and for all.' Which raises a question that Trump has robustly hinted at and others are wondering, too: If there is success in the district — at least, success in the president's eyes — what might that mean for other American cities he thinks need to be fixed? Where does — where could — the federal government go next? ___ Associated Press writer Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report. Calvin Woodward, The Associated Press
