White House officials clashed in the Oval Office over whether President Donald Trump should take a larger knife to the country's largest medical research agency.
According to reporting by The Washington Post, the dispute pitted White House budget director Russell Vought against Jay Bhattacharya, who leads the National Institutes of Health. Three people familiar with the feud told The Post that Vought accused the NIH of bankrolling "woke" initiatives that cut against Trump's agenda.
Vought argued ongoing spending clashed with a Trump executive order that bars "equity-related" grants and contracts, sources told The Post. Bhattacharya defended how his roughly $47 billion agency awards its money.
Sources told The Post that Vought and other officials went as far as floating a fresh review of the agency's grants and even weighing another executive order that would stand up a commission to police them. Trump sat in on the meeting and seemed receptive to Vought's complaints, two of the sources told The Post.
The clash fits a long pattern with Vought, according to The Post. Vought has repeatedly gone after the NIH as he works to shrink federal spending, once telling CBS' "Face the Nation" that "We have an agency that needs dramatic overhaul."
The NIH slashed hundreds of millions of dollars last year for research tied to minority, gay and transgender communities, and it has issued fewer grants on subjects such as women's health, according to The Post. The budget office has also pushed a rule handing political appointees more say over federal grants, though a funding measure has blocked it until December, The Post reported.
Polls and lawmakers say not everyone is on board, per The Post. Polls cited by The Post show bipartisan majorities oppose cutting health research, and even some Republican lawmakers have resisted deeper reductions.
An NIH spokesperson declined to discuss the Oval Office clash with The Post but said NIH funding is safe.
"All NIH grant monies will be spent," the spokesperson said. Bhattacharya made a similar promise when telling House appropriators in March that "we will spend the allocation on excellent science this year," The Post noted.