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russell vought
'These People Should Not Be Managing a Lemonade Stand': Trump Admin Throws NIH Funding Into Chaos
The administration paused National Institutes of Health research funding before reversing course hours later amid fierce backlash.
Jul 30, 2025
The White House budget office, led by far-right ideologue and Project 2025 architect Russell Vought, temporarily halted National Institutes of Health funding for scientific research on Tuesday before announcing that the pause was lifted hours later, sparking further chaos and confusion at a key agency that's under growing attack from the administration.
The pause, which would have impacted roughly $15 billion in funding for research institutions across the United States, was implemented due to a footnote from Vought's office "in a document that doles out federal funds" to the NIH, according to The Wall Street Journal.
News of the pause, which applied to research grants and contracts, sparked immediate outrage, with Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) warning it underscored the administration's plan to "decimate lifesaving research in this country."
But the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) appears to have reversed course. The Washington Post reported that the agency "releas[ed] the funds later in the day." The Health and Human Services Department, which oversees NIH, pointed to an OMB spokesperson's statement that "the funds were released" after a "programmatic review."
"The chaos and dysfunction of the Trump administration is staggering," Murray said Tuesday. "These people should not be managing a lemonade stand, much less all federal cancer research."
The White House has proposed slashing the NIH's budget by 40% next fiscal year. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said earlier this month that the Trump administration's proposed cuts would "ultimately decrease the number of new drugs coming to market."
Tuesday's pause added to the turmoil at an agency that has already faced mass firings and attempts to slash critical funding.
Over the weekend, Vought described the NIH as "an agency that needs dramatic overhaul." Mother Jones reported earlier this year that the NIH "funded research that helped scientists better understand cystic fibrosis, which led to Vertex Pharmaceuticals developing a cutting-edge treatment" that Vought's daughter benefited from.
The Trump administration's effort to slash NIH funding "means that research into rare diseases, already inadequate, may slow down," the outlet noted.
"Ninety-five percent of rare diseases, unlike cystic fibrosis, have no treatment, according to the National Organization for Rare Disorders, and most organizations lack the budget to fund drug research in partnership with pharmaceutical companies," Mother Jones added.
Trump Moves to Kill PEPFAR, Potentially Dooming Millions to Death From AIDS
"There will be an additional 6 million newly infected persons in the world," said the United Nations' top AIDS prevention official recently. "That has started already."
Jul 25, 2025
The U.S. program credited with saving an estimated 26 million lives and preventing millions of new HIV infections has not sufficiently provided a direct benefit to the United States, suggests Trump State Department planning documents for the George W. Bush-era initiative.
Congress rejected cuts to the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) last week, even as Republicans pushed through nearly $8 billion in foreign aid cuts; the program has long had robust bipartisan support as it has enabled 5.5 million babies to be born without HIV to HIV-positive mothers, provided support to 7 million orphans, and driven a decline in new HIV infections in young women in every geographic area that implements its prevention program.
But as The New York Times reported Thursday, a draft plan at the State Department details proposals for "transitioning" low-income countries away from PEPFAR, with the Trump administration imposing what it calls "bilateral relationships" with the aim of ostensibly prioritizing public health in the United States.
Countries in the Global South would be asked to focus efforts on "the detection of outbreaks that could threaten the United States and the creation of new markets for American drugs and technologies," reported the Times.
The administration appears to be approaching PEPFAR with the logic, said journalist Ben Krauss, that the program "needs to be remade to exclusively serve American interests."
"Saving 25 million lives over the past two decades and pulling off one of the greatest humanitarian feats of the century was already serving American interests," said Krauss. "This is just evil."
The State Department documents also say the Trump administration believes "that the transition of PEPFAR can become the premier example of the U.S. commitment to prioritizing trade over aid, opportunity over dependency, and investment over assistance."
PEPFAR-funded programs in low-income countries have already struggled to stay afloat this year following President Donald Trump's foreign aid funding freeze soon after he took office in January. A stop-work order forced some programs to halt services like the provision of antiretroviral therapy and to lay off thousands of staffers.
A waiver issued in February allowed PEPFAR to continue certain programs, but the administration's cuts to and elimination of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has implemented PEPFAR since its inception in 2003, has also impacted the initiative.
Under the plan outlined in the documents—which a spokesperson denied were "reflective of the State Department's policy on PEPFAR"—countries would be required to spend far more of their own funds on fighting the spread of HIV/AIDS. Countries that are close to controlling the epidemic, such as Vietnam and Botswana, would see an end to PEPFAR within two years, while countries that still have high rates of infection and receive significant amounts of U.S. funding, including Kenya and Zimbabwe, would have up to four years.
"There will be some countries that can manage where the PEPFAR investment is not as heavy or as large a proportion of their total effort," Robert Black, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told the Times. "But some of the African countries with enormous HIV problems and national financial problems, debt, and other development issues—I cannot see that they are going to be able to pick up all or even a large proportion of the costs in that kind of time frame."
Winnie Byanyima, the executive director of UNAIDS, the United Nations AIDS prevention agency, said earlier this month that the threats Trump has already made to AIDS relief programs across the globe have begun a "deadly funding crisis."
"Personally I am devastated," she said of the U.S. funding cuts at a U.N. summit in Seville, Spain. "Appalled. Shaken and disgusted. I don't have the English words to use."
Byanyima emphasized that HIV/AIDS prevention funding through PEPFAR and similar programs represents "a drop of money that is nothing in one of these rich G7 countries."
PEPFAR is funded through discretionary spending in the federal budget and accounts for less than .08% of U.S. spending.
"To create such crisis, such pain, and such anger on the ground," said Byanyima. "This cut, that's dedicated people losing jobs, loyal support gone, research ended, vulnerable people abandoned. And it is deaths. What went away immediately was prevention services, so we are very worried about the new infections and about deaths... There will be an additional 6 million newly infected persons in the world. That has started already."
Vought Bills CFPB $5 Million for His Security Detail While Gutting Agency's Consumer Work
"At heart, these guys are all kleptocrats," wrote one critic.
Jul 24, 2025
A top Trump White House official who has incessantly bemoaned wasteful government spending has reportedly billed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau nearly $5 million for his security detail as he guts the agency's ability to fight for Americans scammed by predatory corporations.
Government Executive on Wednesday obtained a memo from the CFPB's deputy chief financial officer showing that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the consumer bureau "are entering into an interagency agreement to pay the costs" of Russell Vought's security.
Vought currently serves as both OMB director and acting director of the CFPB—a longtime target of Trump, congressional Republicans, and corporate forces.
"The memo spelled out that the agreement was 'on a fast track,' despite the funding not being included in the bureau's fiscal 2025 budget," Government Executive noted. "The $4.7 million will cover Vought's security through December, meaning it will draw from both fiscal years 2025 and 2026."
Earlier this year, Vought described the consumer agency's budget—around $820 million for 2025—as "excessive in the current fiscal environment." An OMB spokesperson did not respond when Government Executive asked why CFPB is footing Vought's security bill.
David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, wrote sardonically that Vought—who has helped turn the consumer bureau into a shell of its former self—is "finally getting things done that matter at CFPB."
"And when I say that, I mean his security detail," Dayen added. "At heart, these guys are all kleptocrats."
Don Moynihan, a professor at the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, wrote that Vought is "simultaneously stopping CFPB from protecting American consumers from scams, while also charging it $5 million for his security team."
While the Trump administration's effort to dismantle the bureau entirely has been held up in court, Vought and Republicans in Congress have succeeded at slashing the consumer agency's budget and grinding its enforcement work to a halt. A pair of advocacy groups noted in a memo released in late May that the Vought-led CFPB has quietly dismissed more than 20 public enforcement actions against corporate wrongdoers.
Supporters of the CFPB, which was established in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, have described the agency as a "model of efficiency," touting the fact that it has returned tens of billions of dollars to consumers since its creation.
But that's done nothing to slow the Trump administration's assault on the bureau.
The Prospect's Maureen Tkacik and James Baratta wrote earlier this month that for close to half of 2025, the CFPB's roughly 1,500 staffers "have been locked out of their offices and agency computers, while attorneys and judges deliberate over the degree to which Trump's wrecking crew is legally allowed to assassinate the bureau."
"In the meantime, formal entries into the CFPB's consumer complaints database have soared, suggesting that the business of junk fees, predatory terms, and routine swindles is booming," the pair wrote. "All told, 2.5 million complaints have flooded into the CFPB over the past six months, roughly a quarter of the total complaints the agency has recorded since its inception in 2011, with reports of everything from being shut out of bank accounts after a hurricane to scammers impersonating ICE officials who convince consumers to buy them gift cards in order to help them avoid deportation."
"The ability to force financial scammers to return ill-gotten gains to millions of customers is an awesome authority in a political system that makes it so difficult to materially improve people's lives," they added, "so Vought has unsurprisingly dedicated special effort to destroying that power."
A report released earlier this week by the nonprofit Better Markets notes that the Trump administration's regulatory rollbacks at the CFPB have cost American consumers billions in savings and left them more vulnerable to corporate misconduct.
"The magnitude of the rollback and its costs for American consumers is staggering," said Brady Williams, legal counsel at Better Markets. "The Trump CFPB has aligned itself with industry interests, abandoning its mission to protect consumers."
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