Maddow Blog-New White House budget plan eyes dramatic cuts to cancer research

[LetMyPeopleVote]

American voters last fall might not have realized that a Republican victory in 2024 would mean sweeping cuts to cancer research, but here we are.

Republican pro-death party.

New White House budget plan eyes dramatic cuts to cancer research

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/new-white-house-budget-plan-eyes-dramatic-cuts-cancer-research-rcna210584

— Jon (@bikingviking.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy) 2025-06-03T14:49:42.000Z

Link to tweet

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/new-white-house-budget-plan-eyes-dramatic-cuts-cancer-research-rcna210584

As The New York Times reported, the Trump administration’s plan would impose steep spending cuts across a “vast array of education, health, housing and labor programs,” though there was one element of this that stood out for me. From the Times’ article:

As part of a reorientation that slashed federal health spending, the president proposed chopping funding at the National Cancer Institute by more than $2.7 billion, nearly a 40 percent decrease, drawing a sharp rebuke from cancer research supporters late Friday. ... The cut to cancer research is part of a roughly $18 billion reduction at the National Institutes of Health.”

“For the past 50 years, every significant medical breakthrough, especially in the treatment of cancer, has been linked to sustained federal investment in research” by the institute, the American Cancer Society Action Network said in a statement. “This commitment has contributed to the remarkable statistic of over 18 million cancer survivors currently living in the U.S. today.”

What’s more, as Murray’s office noted in an analysis of the White House blueprint, Donald Trump and his team also intend to take regressive steps on cancer by eliminating the Title X program, which helps millions of Americans afford cancer screenings......

As The New York Times reported, the Trump administration’s plan would impose steep spending cuts across a “vast array of education, health, housing and labor programs,” though there was one element of this that stood out for me. From the Times’ article:

[A]s part of a reorientation that slashed federal health spending, the president proposed chopping funding at the National Cancer Institute by more than $2.7 billion, nearly a 40 percent decrease, drawing a sharp rebuke from cancer research supporters late Friday. ...

A few weeks before that, The New York Times reported that the Trump administration also terminated funding for research at Columbia University, where scientists were “examining the use of artificial intelligence to detect early signs of breast cancer.”

Two weeks before that, the Times also reported on researchers at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Pittsburgh who’d spent months preparing for a clinical trial of a new drug to treat advanced cancers of the mouth, throat and voice box. They were all set to start enrolling patients when their clinical trials were halted — because of a hiring freeze imposed by Trump, Elon Musk and the DOGE initiative.

American voters last fall might not have realized that a Republican victory in 2024 would mean sweeping cuts to cancer research, but here we are..

[gd1]

1. It is a mistake to do this

The money that goes into the research is not lost. It is circulated. And we gain benefits of knowledge that can be shared. But priorities are what they are now.