STAT+: Trump administration to strip job protections of top NIH officials, grants staff

Article excerpt

The Trump administration issued an executive order Wednesday reclassifying roughly 8,000 civil service positions as political appointees, stripping job protections from thousands of merit-based roles. The sweeping change affects high-level NIH officials who oversee the review and disbursement of research grants worth billions annually. Biomedical researchers and policy experts have opposed the move, warning it could inject politics into scientific funding decisions and destabilize the grant system that underpins U.S. biomedical research.