Demanding a Homeland Security bill that reins in lawlessness is the best path for science–even if it stalls NIH funding

The Senate voted today on a final funding package that included both the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), among many other agencies and institutions. As expected, the funding package failed to advance, making a government shutdown more likely. Democrats continue to push to separate funding for the Department of Homeland Security (which includes ICE) from the funding for other agencies. While some Republicans have indicated support for this approach, Senate majority leader John Thune remains opposed. To the extent that the fate of NIH and ICE funding may continue to be linked, we as scientists may feel forced to choose between protecting our own funding and the safety and wellbeing of our neighbors.

This is a false choice.

Science and democracy are fundamentally linked. Both science and democracy depend on the same underlying principles: evidence, accountability, open debate, and transparency. Science cannot flourish in the authoritarian environment advanced through the brutal and fundamentally anti-American tactics of ICE. The current administration is attacking science in part because its values are incompatible with their authoritarian regime. Further, science is an international pursuit that extends across borders and relies on participation from across the globe. More than a quarter of the United States research workforce is foreign born. While the majority of foreign-born scientists in the United States are documented, recent Supreme Court rulings allow ICE to racially profile people and as a result it has repeatedly detained citizens and lawful permanent residents, including scientists with green cards. Science cannot achieve success when so many of our colleagues feel unsafe in the country they now call home.

Even if funded, NIH remains in the hands of lawless and antiscience leaders. ICE is not a rogue agency. Its tactics are not divorced from the values and aspirations of the administration that runs it. The administration is bringing those same values—power, control, and fear—to NIH. The Department of Health and Human Services is overseen by Secretary Robert F Kennedy, Jr., a conspiracy theorist and modern day Lysenko, who will have substantial latitude to drive policy and funding decisions. This is particularly true under an executive order that demotes peer review to mere suggestion for consideration by political appointees. With a very similar budget in fiscal year 2025, this administration managed to execute a devastating attack on science, with no apparent concern for the harm they caused to participants and public health. They have made no indication of changing course, and instead have been congratulating themselves on their “wins.” Many inside NIH are continuing to push back, but their options are increasingly limited. The integrity of the institution has been fundamentally undermined.

The existing NIH funding bill has room for improvement. Despite the slight increase in overall funding, the current NIH budget bill will operate as a 1.8% cut in real dollars (accounting for inflation). We should continue to push for improvements to the NIH budget bill until it is passed and signed. While the current bill does marginally constrain multiyear funding, a last minute change shifted the limit originally based on the fiscal year 2024 level of about 6%, as proposed in the Senate bill, to fiscal year 2025 levels of about 39%. This change was driven by a White House veto threat delivered to House Republicans by none other than Russell Vought. In FY2025, this same 39% multiyear funding rate constricted the National Cancer Institute payline to about 4%, compared to 10% the prior year, and contributed substantially to a 24% year-over-year drop in new research funding. Allowing multiyear funding to continue at the 39% rate means we will see such cuts sustained in 2026.

We need to fight lawlessness at every Federal agency. This administration’s cruel lawlessness is most visible in ICE and Border Patrol, thanks in large part to brave American patriots in Minneapolis risking their lives to bear witness. But the same callous inhumanity and disregard for the law and constitution has infiltrated every government agency, harming Americans from every state, every county, every walk of life. As Simon Rosenberg argued, the passage of 11 bi-partisan appropriations bills was perhaps a “reasonable and defensible” way for Congress to reclaim its power of the purse only if we use this DHS fight to “mount a sustained, national, vigorous effort” to reclaim democracy and fight Trump’s lawlessness. In this light, the stand Democrats are taking on the DHS bill is in and of itself a win. It represents a burgeoning resistance in Congress to Trump’s authoritarianism, a flexing of muscles by a nascent opposition party that will need to continue to grow if we are to save democracy. We must encourage its growth.

Where do we go from here? As scientists we believe a temporary pause in federal funding for science is an acceptable price to pay for reining in lawless, authoritarian paramilitary forces like ICE and CBP. It is important to stand up for all the pillars of a democratic society. We must hang together or we shall surely hang separately.

1. Demand that your Senators withhold their votes from any legislation to send ICE more money. A call link is here. The DHS bill must include meaningful constraints on ICE. Ideally this bill should at a minimum:

   1. Rescind the exorbitant funding provided to ICE under the “Big Beautiful Bill.”

   2. Require DHS to submit to independent investigation by the States

   3. Keep Customs and Border Patrol at the Border and out of American cities.

   4. Require warrants prior to ICE arrests.

   5. Preclude ICE from operating in schools, churches, hospitals, and other venues that provide basic human necessities.

   6. Require ICE agents to wear body cameras, show visible identification, and stop using masks.

2. Ask your members of Congress to reconsider the multiyear funding language in the NIH funding bill and to return to the 2024 limit.

3. Urge your members of Congress to advance legislation that protects the NIH mission. For example, the Follow the Science Act, introduced by Representative Diana DeGette (CO-01), provides a strong start to mitigate political interference in NIH science and prevent future wasteful and harmful grant terminations.