Congress
White House backtracks on NIH funding hold amid Hill uproar
Under pressure from Congress, President Donald Trump’s administration has reversed course after halting spending at the National Institutes of Health.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle had been clamoring for cash to flow while warning that the White House budget office’s decisions have been contributing to a chaotic state of affairs that agitated elected officials in states where jobs rely on NIH dollars.
Budget officials at NIH announced internally Tuesday that the White House was barring the agency from disbursing funds on things like research and training.
Following a swift outcry on Capitol Hill, the Office of Management and Budget then confirmed that all NIH funding for biomedical and public health research had been released, chalking up the freeze to “a programmatic review.”
Congress’ top Democratic appropriators, Washington Sen. Patty Murray and Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, called on the White House to end the freeze late Tuesday night.
“This administration is lying about waste, fraud, and abuse at NIH to justify attacking medical research,” Murray said in a statement.
The pausing of that money also followed a letter last week where 14 Republican senators asked White House budget director Russ Vought to release the funding signed into law by Trump in March, citing the slow disbursement to research centers across the country.
Suspending the funds, the lawmakers warned, “could threaten Americans’ ability to access better treatments and limit our nation’s leadership in biomedical science,” and “risks inadvertently severing ongoing NIH-funded research prior to actionable results.”
Over the weekend, Vought said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” that NIH needed a “dramatic overhaul” and that “we’re going to have to go line by line to make sure the NIH is funded properly.”
Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.
Congress
Moderates beware: Mamdani coalition portends a dramatically different Democratic Party in NYC
NEW YORK — A coalition powered by Mayor Zohran Mamdani expanded the left’s reach Tuesday, winning younger voters across racial and ethnic lines and once again upending conventional wisdom about elections in New York City.
A series of hotly contested congressional and state elections pit a slate of Mamdani-backed democratic socialists and progressives against establishment candidates who, in several cases, differed little on policy aside from U.S.-Israel relations.
The results were staggering.
Midterm election cycles in deep-blue New York City tend to be sleepy affairs. Both this year and in 2022, just over 500,000 people cast ballots, less than 20 percent of eligible voters. But turnout within a congressional district spanning Upper Manhattan and the Bronx increased by roughly 50 percent between 2022 and Tuesday, with more than 66,000 voters heading to the polls.
In another seat covering parts of Brooklyn and Queens, turnout more than doubled from 2022, though state and federal elections were held on different days that year and the seat was not competitive, which would have reduced the number of voters going to the polls.
Congressional candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America were able to replicate the mayor’s success by winning younger Latino voters in Brooklyn and a majority of Black voters in Harlem. Combined with the DSA’s base in relatively wealthy neighborhoods, the result charted the far left’s broadening appeal and a potential reorientation of the electorate that will influence races for years to come.
“This was a big wave for DSA and they did a good job capitalizing on it,” said Evan Roth Smith, a pollster with Slingshot Strategies. “The question now is: Was this a wave cycle that will abate, or is it the start of the takeover?”
Much of Mamdani’s base is concentrated in the so-called “commie-corridor,” a series of neighborhoods along the Brooklyn-Queens waterfront filled with young, educated and affluent voters who’ve propelled several DSA candidates into office. They went gaga over Mamdani’s candidacy and, as Tuesday’s results show, will turn out for candidates he supports.
The area was crucial to Assemblymember Claire Valdez’s crushing 56-38 defeat of Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso.
“The factor that felt most significant to me were all of these New Yorkers who got activated and politicized in the mayor’s race last year who were looking for the next fight,” said Andrew Epstein, a political adviser to Mamdani who worked on Valdez’ campaign. “Those people didn’t go away. And they want to keep going.”
Valdez also won several heavily Latino areas that were expected to break for her opponent.
Reynoso was born in Brooklyn to Dominican parents and just a few years ago was a City Council member representing Bushwick, a long-gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood that’s home to Latino families and young hipsters. Valdez was born in Texas, moved to New York City in 2015 and served in the state Assembly for just one term before launching her Mamdani-backed bid for retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez’s seat.
She ended up winning areas of Bushwick by even greater margins than the total results — in some election districts winning upwards of 80 percent of the vote.
“You don’t win the district by 35 points if you don’t have broad advantages across age and demographic groups,” said Michael Lange, an election analyst and Mamdani supporter who has tracked several contested races with extreme granularity. “Is she blowing him out of the water with Hispanic voters under 50? I see tons of evidence that the answer is yes.”
The age advantage was the common thread across several other races.
In Upper Manhattan and the Bronx, for example, younger Black voters in Harlem were key to Darializa Avila Chevalier’s win over Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus who had built a small political empire in the district.
While gentrifying, the neighborhood remains a seat of Black political power and is home to younger households who tend to rent. That particular demographic is a strong indicator of why Mamdani won the area in 2025, even as he lost the Black vote overall to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose support was concentrated among older Black homeowners in Brooklyn and Queens.
While Espaillat never healed a rift with the Black community in upper Manhattan opened during his election in 2016, which contributed to his weak performance, Avila Chevalier demonstrated Tuesday that a significant share of voters there were not just supportive of Mamdani the person, but of the broader political movement he’s now leading.
Overall, she edged out Espaillat with Black voters 48-46, according to an analysis from The New York Times, which charted demographic breakdowns for several contested races.
Three winning congressional candidates endorsed by Mamdani — including former city Comptroller Brad Lander in Brooklyn, who unseated incumbent Dan Goldman — share several similarities. They won younger, college-educated and wealthier voters by huge margins, in several cases by 30 points or more, and lost lower-income voters to incumbents or candidates affiliated with incumbents — a sign that the movement seeking to boost struggling New Yorkers has not won them over.
While the DSA was able to win three state races without the support of Mamdani — a testament to the organizing prowess of the left that was essential to reactivating the mayor’s coalition — there were limits to the city’s leftward shift.
Rep. Grace Meng won her reelection race, though she only vanquished challenger Chuck Park by 14 points, an uncomfortable margin for an incumbent of her stature. Park, who ran to Meng’s left, was boosted by a huge turnout in Woodside, Queens, a multiethnic neighborhood that went heavily for Mamdani in last year’s mayoral race.
Elsewhere in the Bronx, however, incumbents remained strong. Rep. Ritchie Torres handily won reelection with 72 percent of the vote, though it was a low-turnout affair more consistent with an uncompetitive midterm. Nevertheless, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries touted the results — even as he watched a series of his endorsed candidates fall to the DSA in Brooklyn, his home borough, in a preview of the intraparty battles to come.
“In some higher-income districts, there was an outsized focus on the Middle East. In other districts, for instance, in the South Bronx, Ritchie Torres ran against somebody who was heavily critical of his position on Israel, and he won by fifty points,” Jeffries told MS NOW on Wednesday.
An anticipated vote on cutting off U.S. military aid to Israel is among the subjects House Democrats are slated to discuss on an unusual teleconference Sunday evening.
Six people granted anonymity to describe private caucus plans confirmed the member call, which has not been publicly announced. Two of them said it would involve an amendment that would block aid to Israel and other appropriations matters.
Democrats are likely to be sharply divided on an amendment drafted by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) to a fiscal 2027 spending bill funding the State Department and foreign aid programs. Massie is proposing to end Israel aid and cut the overall foreign military aide program by $3.3 billion.
House Republicans have not yet announced a vote on that bill, but two other people granted anonymity to describe GOP planning said it is likely to be added to the floor schedule next week. The House Rules Committee voted last week to set up debate on Massie’s amendment.
Senior Democrats want to talk through member concerns and strategy on the Sunday call, according to one of the six people.
The call comes just days after three outspoken critics of U.S. aid to Israel swept hotly contested House primaries in New York City, ousting two incumbents.
Meredith Lee Hill and Riley Rogerson contributed to this report.
The Oversight Committee slapped Leon Black with two subpoenas in the middle of his transcribed interview about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein — after Black refused to answer questions about potential non-disclosure agreements he had with women tied to the late, convicted sex offender.
Oversight Committee Chair James Comer announced the issuance of the subpoenas — for the NDAs and for Black to reappear for a formal deposition July 16 — after the first hour of Black’s interview had concluded with the billionaire investor insisting he would not discuss the terms of those agreements.
Black had initially agreed to appear voluntarily, but under the terms of a deposition, his testimony will be videotaped and under oath.
“We believe that information is vital to our investigation,” Comer, a Kentucky Republican, told reporters Friday. “We want to know, was Jeffrey Epstein involved in the NDAs? … Was he involved in awarding [of] funds to the women for the NDAs? What was the reason for the NDAs?”
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the panel, seconded Comer’s decision to force a deposition to compel information that he also described as central to the panel’s ongoing Epstein probe — a rare moment of bipartisanship in an investigation that has been plagued by partisan bickering.
“There’s no question that as soon as this interview started, that the witness was not going to answer critical questions,” he told reporters.
After Black had already departed from the closed-door interview, his lawyer, Susan Estrich, said that Epstein “had no involvement with any NDAs, whether they exist or not,” and said her client has never abused a woman.
“They made a premeditated political decision to serve him with subpoenas after less than an hour of questioning, and before they even asked a single question about his legitimate payments to Epstein,” she said, referring to members of the Oversight panel. “This was nothing more than a planned political stunt.”
Estrich represented the late Fox News chairman Roger Ailes when he was facing sexual misconduct accusations. Black has also battled his own allegations of sexual assault, though he has denied the accusations — along with having had knowledge of Epstein’s wrongdoing over the course of their relationship.
Several Democrats who attended the interview were aghast at Black’s lack of cooperation. Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico told reporters that more than one of Epstein’s accusers had previously accused Black of committing sexual misconduct against them, too.
“Before Mr. Black left the interview, he admitted that he lived close to Epstein,” Stansbury said. “He often dined at his house. He went over for breakfast, for happy hours, attended impromptu dinners with world leaders, with academics, with scientists.”
Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.) alleged that Black “gush[ed] poetically about how smart and how great Jeffrey Epstein was” and accused him of walking out on the committee.
The bipartisan desire to get more information from Black comes as the committee’s Epstein investigation is set to hit the one-year mark in July, after Oversight Committee Democrats — frustrated with the Justice Department’s refusal to release the so-called Epstein files — forced a bipartisan vote to facilitate the publication of relevant materials.
That vote jumpstarted a congressional probe that has led to interviews with more than a dozen witnesses, including ex-Attorney General Pam Bondi, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Bill and Hillary Clinton and Bill Gates.
Comer has also asked acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to speak with his panel in the coming weeks, after Bondi accused him of being at the tip of the spear in overseeing the eventual release of the Epstein files in compliance with a law Congress passed in December.
Members will have more to ask Blanche following the Justice Department’s admission on Thursday that the DOJ had been violating the law Congress passed last November requiring the public release of the vast majority of government records relating to Epstein.
A federal judge gave Blanche one week to release certain names and other information that DOJ initially redacted from the millions of pages of the Epstein files — or provide a more detailed explanation for withholding them.
Critics believe the department has been seeking to protect powerful people implicated in Epstein’s crimes — including potentially President Donald Trump, who has not been charged with wrongdoing and has denied misconduct.
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