27 UNIHTED / NIH Vigils Newsletter 8/30/26

Written By Cara AB

Hi NIH Vigilers and 27 UNIHTED Community,

This week we honor an icon and one of the really good humans in the world, Dolly Parton.  Dolly was best known for her music, her style, her generosity, and her wit.  Among her charities, the most well known is Imagination Library, which provides books to children and encourages literacy, imagination, and curiosity.  Less widely recognized are her contributions to science and public health.  People may have seen her become an early public recipient of the COVID-19 vaccine saying “I'm old enough to get it and I'm smart enough to get it.” They may even have heard her remake of the song Jolene, with the lyrics “vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, I'm begging of you, please don't hesitate.” What they may not have known is that $1M of her money was donated to Vanderbilt University Medical Center to support early mRNA vaccine trials that led to the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.  She later gave Vanderbilt an additional $1M for pediatric infectious disease research.  Over the years, she also donated money to and raised awareness for HIV/AIDS, women’s health, pediatric healthcare, and cancer.  Finally, Dollywood was home to the world’s largest sanctuary for bald eagles. 

Dolly said “If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.”  Let’s get paving, folks!  Where are you going to start? 

Vigil “Auntie” News 

- The Good -

27 UNIHTED shines a light on proposed review changes

Former and current NIH staff intimately familiar with peer review have written a detailed description of how NIH’s recent proposal to reduce sharing of peer review scores will weaken peer review and reduce transparency while increasing burden on applicants and federal staff.  The new process, for example, would lump together an application in the top 1% with one scoring at the less-impressive 25% mark, making it harder for NIH program staff to judge peer reviewers’ enthusiasm for a particular application.  While NIH argues that the new system will promote flexibility and deemphasize focus on imperfect numerical scores, current and former NIH staff write that these changes will easily allow for politically based or biased funding decisions with no recourse for appeal.  The new system would also give unsuccessful applicants less useful feedback on whether they should revise and resubmit.  “At a time when HHS and NIH promote ‘radical transparency,’” the authors write, “withholding key pieces of information from concerned parties does the exact opposite.”  The public comment period for this proposal is open until October 13. Please submit a comment to help get these concerns on the record.  Don’t know how to write a compelling comment?  Don’t worry, the Substack covers that as well.

Opinion of public service rises as this administration wreaks havoc with the system

Recent polls show an uptick in how the public views the civil service.  When asked about two major indicators, whether civil servants “are committed to helping people like me,” and whether “most civil servants are competent,” positive answers increased 11% and 10% since 2021, respectively, with the biggest increase occurring between 2024 and 2026.  Google searches for “Public Servants” and "Civil Servants” have also seen a 10-fold increase since Trump took office.  Partnership for Public Service attributes this to the recent cuts to federal service and the direct impacts of these cuts to people and communities around the country.  

More Good News:

  • USDA unions and their allies speak out, writing an open letter outlining how the changes to their department will cut services including SNAP, rural infrastructure development, wildfire management, and research supporting agriculture and forestry. They are asking for support in stopping this harmful reorganization.

- The Bad -

NIH webinar on unified funding strategy fails to reassure

At an August 14 webinar, NIH leaders stated that the agency’s new Unified Funding Strategy (UFS) will eliminate fixed paylines, expand the role of program staff in evaluating full grant applications, and give institute leadership a more defined mandate to weigh agency priorities, portfolio balance, and other considerations alongside peer review. NIH asserts that the system will make funding more flexible and responsive to the needs of individual institutes. Community responses to the webinar highlight that the NIH failed to address concerns about this being yet another shift toward less-visible and more political decision-making.  

Elizabeth G. points out that during the webinar, no one mentioned that over the last year numerous funding decisions made at NIH institutes and centers (ICs) have often been overturned by NIH or HHS leadership. Jennifer Troyer raises concerns that in the context of the changes in peer review and the proposed changes in how review scores are reported, as well as the increased politicization of the NIH workforce, there is a steady move towards decreased reliance on scientific merit, reduced transparency, and more opportunity for political influence over which science gets funded. 

NSF shifts funding for training from academia to industry and eliminates fellowship support for some social sciences

NSF is proposing a new training program to give graduate students experience in industry, even though an existing NSF program, INTERN, has offered such internships for 25 years.  One reason, Science reports, is that the new I-PhD program will follow the Trump administration’s preference for funding corporate partnerships rather than academic training programs. At the same time, changes to NSF’s Graduate Research Fellowship program would cut funding for fields like education, economics, and public policy.  NSF is a major funder of social science graduate support, and critics warn that these changes will gravely harm social, behavioral, and economics graduate programs across the nation.  The cutting of public policy funding also aligns with recent administration moves to sever ties between scientific research funding and policy, as highlighted this week in a Forbes article.

More Bad News:

  • Measles hits a 35-year record, threatening U.S. elimination status. U.S. measles cases hit the worst tally since 1991. Measles elimination status is at risk, a benchmark held since 2000. 93% of cases are in the unvaccinated, a direct cost of an administration that treats vaccine confidence as optional.

  • Newly revealed documents provide evidence that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lied during his confirmation hearings, repeatedly telling Senators that his 2019 trip to Samoa had nothing to do with vaccines. Emails reveal that he told the governor that he wanted his team to “conduct detailed health informatics assessment in Samoa of what happened with your MMR vaccines.”  However, before he arrived, it was determined that the deaths related to the vaccines were due to human error, not an issue with the vaccine.  

- The Ugly -

Banning words is resulting in censorship of ideas

A new article in the journal Social Science and Medicine-Mental Health describes how political pressure on scientists incentivizes them to self-censor their own research proposals.  The article argues that the current administration’s termination of scientific research grants mid-course and slow-walking or refusal to fund grants over political disagreements or disfavored terms will have a chilling effect on researchers.  Those who depend on federal funding understand that keeping their labs open and their staff employed requires putting forth research questions that will be funded, which in turn affects what science gets done.  The article states that this type of pressure is particularly insidious because it “converts the coercive effects of state action into private editorial decisions, distributes the moral injury across thousands of individual scientists each making a defensible compromise, and leaves executive power free to deny with curious vigor that any censorship is occurring at all.” 

Agencies are complying in advance

The Department of Education, following in the footsteps of NSF, has proposed provisions that would give political appointees veto power over their grantmaking decisions.  These changes are designed to align with OMB’s proposed, but not yet enacted, grant overhaul.  These pre-emptive moves to comply before rules are finalized could mean that administration priorities are imposed on the agency’s procedures even if OMB’s proposed grantmaking regulations are stopped by Congress or struck down in court.

HHS leads departments in the number of political appointees

Politico reports there are now 264 non-Senate-confirmed political appointees at HHS, up from the previous high of 175 in the final year of the Biden administration, meaning they now have more political appointees than any other agency.  This is happening amidst a drop in career staffers from over 93,400 in January 2025 to a 19 year low of 72,900.  At the same time, there is a 7-year low in hiring, with departures far outpacing new hires so far in fiscal year 2026.  More concerning than the number of political appointees is their conflicts of interest. Many have financial interests in the sectors they now regulate, and they are making decisions that would previously have been made by non-partisan career civil servants hired for their subject-matter expertise.  These include decisions such as canceling research grants, blocking external communication and altering vaccine guidance.  

More Ugly News:

  • RFK, Jr.’s Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) approved a backward-looking research plan that directs funding toward debunked science. Medical Daily reports that “the plan shifts emphasis away from the genetics-first approach that has dominated federal autism research, toward areas with far less supporting evidence, including diet, inflammation, metabolic stress, and folate.” 

  • Russell Vought’s OMB erases public comments opposing the proposed Federal Financial Assistance rule, including one from a mother describing how NIH-funded research let doctors treat her daughter's cystic fibrosis with Trikafta before birth. Vought's own family has publicly credited that same NIH-backed drug for saving his daughter, even as he guts the funding behind it. 

Reflection from the Community

“If you aren't attracting the people to federal service who want to do the best science, provide the best answers…whether it's at the NIH or NASA or USAID…if it's not an attractive place for highly qualified people to be, then you're going to get a very different federal workforce than the one you have now.”

- Jennifer Troyer

Leadership Watch

Dr. Wendy Weber appointed to head National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH).  Dr. Weber, who holds both a doctorate of naturopathic medicine and a Ph.D. in epidemiology, has deep experience in pain management, integrative health, and clinical trials testing herbal interventions.  She was the first naturopathic doctor to win an NIH career development (K) award, and previously served as NCCIH’s acting deputy director.  NCCIH has a budget of roughly $170 million and a mission to investigate “the usefulness and safety of complementary and integrative health approaches and their roles in improving health and health care.”  Dr. Weber started her new role on August 23.  

Upcoming Events

27 UNIHTED / NIH community events

Community Events

  • “Vigil Auntie” Jenna Norton to speak on the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Science Rising National Call on Wed, September 2 at 3pm ET. Register to join. 

  • Federal Workforce Advocates will hold their next meetup for federal workers and contractors on September 15, 6-7 pm in the Programming room of the C. Burr Artz Library in downtown Frederick.  Come share your thoughts and experiences in a safe, supportive, and confidential space.  

  • Dr. Kristian Andersen presents "On Viral Emergence and the Origins of Pandemics", Tuesday, October 6, 2 pm, Building 40, NIH campus. Those without campus access who wish to attend, contact Lee Eiden for information on registering as a guest.

  • Crow’s Nest Baltimore is showing “22 Federal Workers”: a virtual exhibition of oil portraits by NIHer and artist “Paint Brains” honoring federal workers and their public-service contributions. On display online through October 10. 

Calls To Action

Wondering how to write a public comment for the Federal Register?  Find commenting guidance at Regulations.gov.

*New* Send a comment to NIH about removing K99/KT1 eligibility for visa-holders

It was reported that NIH plans to eliminate visa-hold eligibility for pathway to independence awards. Send anonymous or named comments to nihtrain@nih.mail.gov with your ZIP code, and forward them to congress, your institution, and your societies. The best comments include your personal story about how this would impact your colleagues, science, or patients.

*New* Sign the letter urging USDA Secretary Rollins to stop the reorganization

USDA unions wrote an open letter outlining how the changes into their department will cut services including SNAP, rural infrastructure development, wildfire management, and research supporting agriculture and forestry. Sign as a named or anonymous individual or encourage organization sign on.

Submit ideas for future NIH Common Fund priorities

NIH is seeking public input on cross-cutting biomedical and behavioral research challenges that could be addressed through workshops, pilot initiatives, or future NIH Common Fund programs.  Direct inquiries to: Common Fund Office, Office of the Director, cf-ideas@mail.nih.gov.  Responses are due by September 19.

Comment on NIH’s sweeping new biosafety policy

NIH is seeking public comment on a draft policy that would replace its nearly 50-year-old recombinant-DNA guidelines with a more general one covering laboratory biomedical research involving specified biohazards.  Importantly, the requirements would also extend to non-NIH-funded research conducted at institutions receiving NIH funding.  Submit comments here by October 19.

Submit a comment about proposed changes to NIH grant review reporting

NIH is seeking public input on the proposed change to report application categorization as “most competitive,” “competitive,” and “not discussed” in lieu of final overall impact score.  Comments due by October 13.

Sign the Stand Up for Science petition supporting Dr. Fauci

According to Stand Up for Science (SUFS), it is likely illegal that the Republicans on the Senate panel referred the contempt resolution to the Justice Department without a full-Senate vote.  On August 7, 2026, SUFS published a petition to Congress to rescind the contempt referral to the Justice Department immediately.  Currently at 5,500 public signatures.

Endorse the Bethesda Declaration - One Year Later

A year after the release of the original Bethesda Declaration, NIH staff remain concerned.  The chaos of 2025 has been replaced with coordinated, systematic, institutionalized destruction in 2026.  If you share these concerns, be counted as a supporter of the Bethesda Declaration: One Year Later.  Learn more about the Bethesda Declaration Movement on 27 UNIHTED's Bethesda Declaration Hub.  Currently at 480+ signatures.

Impeach Vought

Add your name (or anonymous voice) on the petition to urge Congress to impeach Office of Management and Budget (OMB) DirectorRussell Vought for unlawfully dismantling government services Americans rely on.  Learn more at www.impeachvought.com.  Currently at 2,593 signatures. Encourage your Representatives to sign on to House Resolution 1479: Impeaching Russell Thurlow Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Stand with EPA scientists

More than 100 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) employees were fired for signing a Declaration of Dissent raising concerns about their working environment and recent policy changes.  Sign the petition to support these silenced staff members who were retaliated against for speaking out to protect science and public health.  Currently at 580 signatures.

Sign on for scientific integrity

The Union of Concerned Scientists has drafted a letter of support for the Scientific Integrity Act, which has been reintroduced to the Senate.  Let our leaders know that evidence-based decision-making is important to you by signing The Momentum for Scientific Integrity Action here.

Stand up for the National Science Board

On April 25, the Trump administration dismissed all sitting members of the National Science Board, an independent advisory group for the National Science Foundation.  Sign this open letter to Congress from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering & Medicine (NASEM), asking for the reinstatement of fired members and appointments for all vacant positions.  27 UNIHTED has added its organizational endorsement.  Currently at 6,080 signatories and endorsements.

Reach out to your members of Congressabout issues that matter to you.

Some possible topics:

Help the NIH community: Review a resume, host a job workshop, plan a happy hour, volunteer, and/or advocate with 27 UNIHTED.  Check out the links on our website to take action and volunteer. 

Wellness Weekly

Our somewhat serious community recommendations for self-care are:

  • Take one deep breath before opening your email, or maybe just don’t open it right now

  • Watch a baby sleep (fur babies work, too)

  • Eat lunch somewhere that isn’t your desk

In solidarity,

27 UNIHTED and NIH Vigils

Cara AB
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27 UNIHTED / NIH Vigils Newsletter 8/23/26