NIH Vigil 07-04-2026

This Week’s Updates and Discussion

The Good

• House and Senate Democrats demand OMB rescind grants rule. 

The Bad

• "Abolish the NIH," argues a Washington Post op-ed.

The Ugly

• Supreme Court strips job protections from independent agency leaders. 

• Supreme Court upholds state bans on transgender athletes. 

• OPM moves to make it easier to fire federal employees. 

America 250 - A July 4th Vigil

This 4th of July and America's 250th Birthday, we would like to celebrate some of the history of the NIH: 

• 1887: NIH was first created as a one-room bacteriology laboratory in the U.S. Marine Hospital Service, which later became the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS)

• 1930: Officially designated as the National Institute (singular) of Health

• 1937: Rocky Mountain Lab joined the NIH

• 1937: Dr. Lewis R. Thompson was the first NIH Director

• 1937: NCI was created as a separate branch of PHS and later joined NIH

• 1938: Congress approved construction of NIH facilities in Bethesda

• 1944: The Public Health Service Act moved NCI into NIH and established Advisory Councils

• 1946: NIH created an extramural funding program and adopted peer review, the pillars of the university-based system that powers U.S. biomedical science 

• 1937 - 2011:  NIH grew to 27 Institutes, the last being the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS).

This is our time. We are here weekly, to fight for the next 250 years. Welcome to America's future. It will be what WE make of it.