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{"id":27225,"date":"2026-09-21T19:19:41","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T19:19:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/collins-slams-trump-plan-to-politicize-grants-as-defying-congress\/"},"modified":"2026-09-21T19:19:41","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T19:19:41","slug":"collins-slams-trump-plan-to-politicize-grants-as-defying-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/collins-slams-trump-plan-to-politicize-grants-as-defying-congress\/","title":{"rendered":"Collins slams Trump plan to \u2018politicize\u2019 grants as defying Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Senate Appropriations Chair <a href=\"https:\/\/directory.politicopro.com\/member\/51168\" data-person-id=\"51168\">Susan Collins<\/a> warned Monday that President Donald Trump would be defying Congress if he moves forward with empowering top political appointees to decide who gets grant funding for health research.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAny attempt to politicize grantmaking \u2026 is contrary to congressional intent,\u201d the Maine Republican said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>Trump wants to issue an executive order to seat White House budget director Russ Vought and National Institutes of Health director Jay Bhattacharya on a board that would decide which grants the NIH should fund, according to two administration officials granted anonymity to describe a private meeting in the Oval Office last Friday.<\/p>\n<p>Following <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/09\/19\/nih-grants-trump-vought-bhattacharya-harvard-01085413\" target=\"_blank\">reports of that meeting<\/a>, Collins noted Monday that the stopgap funding patch <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/09\/01\/congress-funding-patch-shutdown-midterms-01060046\" target=\"_blank\">Congress cleared this summer<\/a> bars the White House from finalizing a separate proposed rule to put political appointees in charge of approving federal grants, or \u201cany substantially similar\u201d plan.<\/p>\n<p>The Office of Management and Budget \u201cshould not be involved in agency decisions on the awards of grants,\u201d Collins said, adding that \u201cimposing a political review \u2026 undermines the long-standing principle that the government funds awards based on scientific need and merit, rather than political ideology.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Connecticut Rep. <a href=\"https:\/\/directory.politicopro.com\/member\/51351\" data-person-id=\"51351\">Rosa DeLauro<\/a>, the House\u2019s top Democratic appropriator, called the White House&#8217;s latest idea an attempt to \u201ctake control over federal funding, so they can use it to punish their perceived enemies and reward their friends.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Washington Sen. <a href=\"https:\/\/directory.politicopro.com\/member\/51219\" data-person-id=\"51219\">Patty Murray<\/a>, the Senate\u2019s top Democratic appropriator, warned that the move would mean \u201ca single political appointee could kill a cancer study or an Alzheimer\u2019s trial with no scientific reason at all.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A spokesperson for House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole did not return a request for comment regarding the Oklahoma Republican&#8217;s position.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins warned Monday that President Donald Trump would be defying Congress if he moves forward with empowering top political appointees to decide who gets grant funding for health research. \u201cAny attempt to politicize grantmaking \u2026 is contrary to congressional intent,\u201d the Maine Republican said in a statement. Trump wants to issue [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27225\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}