The Bay Area's major universities have all helped make the region a hub for biomedical research, and much of that cutting-edge research has been funded through federal grants, but under the Trump administration hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants have been suspended.
On Wednesday, the Senate Appropriations Committee hosted a hearing highlighting the importance of that funding, and it included a rare phenomena in the nation's capital: bipartisan support.
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WATCH HERESenators from both sides of the aisle offered their backing for America's biomedical researchers and urged the Trump administration to restore stability to the way the government funds their work.
"Proposed funding cuts, the firing of essential federal scientists and policy uncertainties threaten to undermine the foundation for our nation's global leadership," Sen. Susan Collins said.
Local researchers like Eva Harris at UC Berkeley share those concerns. She's watching program after program get threatened or cut.
"I'm responsible not only for my own laboratory and then we have a very large international component, which actually was just cut today after building it for 35 years," she said.
Panelists at Wednesday's hearing voiced major concerns that the cuts that have been made to Department of Health and Human Services employees are already creating a logjam in the system that provides money for new grants and existing grant recipients.
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But the conversation on Capitol Hill is very different from the conversation happening within the Trump administration. During a cabinet briefing at the White House, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. listed what he said are his department's accomplishments so far and priorities for the future. After congratulating Elon Musk for helping slash Health and Human Services jobs, Kennedy had a long checklist to present to the president, including a surprising claim.
"HHS became a collaborator in child trafficking for sex and for slavery. We have ended that and we're very aggressively going out and trying to find these children – 300,000 children that were lost by the Biden administration," he said.
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SIGN UP Kennedy did not provide any details about the claim.
Restoring funding and stability to research grants was not among the priorities he spelled out.
