The NIH firing plan is really a radical institute merger and authoritarian takeover
It must be stopped. We can act.
A few weeks ago, Trump political appointees ordered NIH civil servants to plan for firings — to plan for a reduction in force (RIF). NIH people were ordered to find ways to merge parts of NIH to cut costs, and they ran themselves ragged to produce a plan. Last week, that plan was submitted to the Trump people. It was summarily rejected. Yesterday, the actual Trump plan was released: 10,000 job cuts across Health and Human Services, NIH’s parent agency, and about 1,200 at NIH, said to be mostly administration, but including some scientists.
The job cuts are bad. But they're not the big story. The big story of this plan for NIH is how it consolidates many parts of the science research agency. The consolidation that is core to this plan pulls power away from scientists and puts it in the hands of political employees — the Trump/Musk team. The consolidation plan sets up Trump to kill NIH as an evidence-based science funder. We can work now to stop the plan and halt that consolidation. Scientists should now speak to the public about how the Trump consolidation plan and RIF will kill all kinds of research for cures, including research into diseases like cancer.
The Trump plan for NIH is an Orban anti-democracy plan
Viktor Orban has proven to be a model for modern authoritarian takeovers. When Orban took power in Hungary for the second time, in 2010, he used the tools of the state to destroy democracy. He weakened judicial independence, curtailed press freedom, and increased corruption. The American right has studied Orban's playbook: Project 2025 has been described as modeled on Orban's Hungary, and JD Vance has openly and vocally admired the way that Orban turned Hungary's democracy into an authoritarian mafia state.
When Orban consolidated power over Hungary, he often focused on controlling two things: money, and jobs. He took over payment systems and centralized hiring and firing. That's very similar to what Trump and Musk are doing now: they went into the Treasury Department to take over the payment systems. And recent executive orders say Trump wishes to centralize government-wide purchasing through GSA, and centralize government-wide firing at OPM.
That centralization is what’s happening in this plan for NIH too. Look at what RFK's press releases have said: they plan to centralize control over NIH purchasing and human resources. That's taking control of the money, and taking control of hiring and firing. That consolidation (RIF) plan will put control over the key levers at NIH into the hands of Trump officials at the top.
The consolidation plan will hand control of the grants program to Trump's people
Right now, NIH has 27 institute and center (IC) directors who have the power to make granting decisions. Those IC directors are typically eminent scientists who come in from outside NIH to preside over the grants program for one institute. Those facts are key: the IC directors are scientists, not political appointees, and there are 27 of them. The IC directors have never been political hacks: they have, by and large, done what they see is in the best interest of science. And having 27 institutes, instead of giving all the power over NIH to the NIH director, creates decentralization, which empowers individual scientific decision-makers and resists political control.
This consolidation plan — the Orbanization of NIH — simply aims to bypass the IC directors on major functions like hiring, firing, and control of spending. Moreoever, we just saw the Trump administration take any grant peer review out of institutes and centralize it completely in the Center for Scientific Review. Together, these moves weaken NIH's scientific independence and concentrate power into the hands of Trump officials.
Another way the plan centralizes power goes beyond what Orban did: it centralizes the information technology (IT) systems. Right now, the different institutes and centers run their own IT. So if Trump officials want to listen in on messages, or install monitoring software, or pull grant data out of the institutes, they have to deal with more than twenty IT departments, each of whom report to an IC director — and the IC director is a scientist, not a political hack. Centralizing IT would make it much easier for political appointees to influence NIH: there will be only one department to influence and only one director to bend to their will.
Don't fall for the trap. This is a plan to harm NIH, not improve it.
RFK and the Trump people are leaning hard into 'efficiency'. That appeals to some NIH people and to the public. And it does seem plausible in some ways — there are many ways that NIH could be improved by making support functions work better. But that's something that has to be done in concert with Congress, with careful attention to NIH’s mission, and in accordance with the law. Doing that means taking at least a year. Just the logistics are incredibly hard. As Harvard Business Review says, merely merging two sales systems after a merger can “take six or even twelve months.” And that’s two departments, and just one application system. The NIH IT systems support complex science and grant processes, span over 20 departments, and have dozens or hundreds of applications. A real NIH IT integration should be given years to plan and execute.
That ‘efficiency’ push has gotten even some NIH people onboard. We have seen too many NIH people willing to do Trump's bidding as they have rushed to produce a plan that would achieve cuts and consolidation.
NIH people following those instructions from the Trump appointees is a fool's errand. At this point it’s hopefully clear to everyone at NIH that NIH got played: the Trump people produced their own plan. Now is the time for every NIH employee, and every member of the public to say this plan is a terrible idea.
How do we act to stop this plan?
One way is the courts. We hope that lawsuits will be filed to stop this consolidation of NIH functions.
But scientists now have to reach out to the public. Use whatever tools you have available: reach out to your colleagues and share this article, get on your local TV station, write a letter to the editor to your local or hometown paper. Find people who are like-minded, talk to them about what’s happening, and make plans for action together. We don't have much time left to stop this consolidation and the Orban-style centralization of NIH. If this consolidation and job-cut plan goes through it will be devastating for American science, and the biomedical research cures that NIH is developing for diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and cancer.
Thank you for this.
Many of us in the public arena knew that the 47 regime would usher in insane, chaotic changes designed to destroy our system of government, but I don't think most of us realized the true extent and pace of the destruction, even naively believing the courts would be a bulwark against their extreme agenda.. it is undeniably clear that the American people must band together and rise up to denounce this regime, stand up for the rule of law, and all of the good work our federal governmental employees have done and continue to do, as long as they are able.. we must support these civil servants - most of whom could have taken jobs in the private sector for so much more money - but chose instead to serve their neighbors, and for what?? To get a thankless slap in the face from the very people they've worked so hard for?!