‘Secretive’ Agreement Will Divert NIH Funds To Pentagon, Warns DeLauro

Rep. Rosa DeLauro Complained That The NIH Agreement Was Made ‘Without Notifying Congress Or The American People’

The term “quietly”applies here because you could say that the agreement went down kind of on the down low. There was no real press conference after assistant secretary of defense Robert Kadlec, SES, had signed the interagency agreement on August 4, and NIH director Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, had done so on August 5. And you can’t find a clear announcement on the NIH web site either.

In fact, it looks like Congress—you know that branch of government that’s supposed to have the power of the purse—didn’t even know about this agreement until recently. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut), who serves on the House Appropriations Committee, called this out in statement issued by the Appropriations Committee Democrats nearly a month later on September 3: “Without notifying Congress or the American people, DoD has signed an interagency agreement that could give the Department access to billions of dollars that Congress provided to NIH for critical biomedical research.”

This statement continued with, “These funds were provided to support research to develop treatments or cures for infectious diseases such as influenza, malaria, tuberculosis, HIV, Ebola, and other dangerous pathogens.” It also quoted DeLauro as saying, “This secretive attempt to siphon research funds away from NIH is outrageous. The interagency agreement needs to be terminated immediately.”

In response, the Pentagon issued the following statement: “The assertion by any official that the agreement was made in secret, or for any other purpose, is false. Additionally, the transparent agreement does not constitute any blanket transfer of funds.” That still didn’t quite explain why there wasn’t much more of an announcement when the interagency agreement was first established. And why Congress had to do some extra Alex Cross-esque sleuthing just to find out about the agreement.

The Agreement Allows Funds To Flow From NIH To The Department Of Defense But Not The Opposite Direction

Moreover, the agreement does seem to be going in one direction—and we’re not talking about the group that sang “What Makes You Beautiful” here. Just look at the following lines from the “Purpose” section of the interagency agreement stated: “This Interagency Agreement facilitates the facilitates the transfer of funds from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to the Office of the Assistant Secretary of War (OASW). The purpose is for OASW to provide acquisition services to support the advanced development of medical countermeasures against pandemic influenza, chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) threats, and emerging infectious diseases.”

OK, the first line stipulated that the funds could flow in one direction from the NIH to the DoD. But what about the other direction—from the much more budget endowed DoD to the budget shrinkage-facing NIH? After DeLauro raised a fuss about the agreement, the Pentagon has said in a statement that this agreement, “serves as a vehicle for strategic collaboration on a project-by-project basis where our shared missions naturally overlap.”

Will This Agreement Further Reduce NIH Funds Available For Biomedical Researchers?

Critics of the agreement are wondering whether this may be yet another vehicle for the Trump administration to reduce the amount of funding available to those doing health and biomedical research around the U.S. Since 2017, the Trump administration has been about as subtle as a pair of “Never Surrender” Golden Sneakers in its attempts to cut the NIH budget. During Donald Trump’s first go at being U.S. President, his administration repeatedly rolled out budgets that included substantial cuts to the NIH budget only to have Congress on each occasion ignore such cuts as if they were a bottle of Trump Vodka.

The second coming of the Trump administration has continued to do more of the same. In 2025, the Trump administration tossed out a budget that would have slashed the NIH budget by a whopping 40 percent or so for fiscal year 2026, which would have amounted to a $18 billion cut. Congress once again essentially ghosted this White House request.

That hasn’t really deterred the Trump administration, which like Wile E. Coyote has kept trying and trying in different ways. In 2026, the White House once again put forth a budget that would cut the NIH budget—this time by 12 to 13 percent for fiscal year 2027. Congress has yet to agree on a budget for fiscal year 2027 and has instead recently passed a continuing resolution that would maintain current budgets until at least December 11.

In the meantime, the Trump administration has taken various actions—or in some cases “inactions”—that have effectively reduced the amount of NIH funding available to researchers. This has included delaying the NIH’s receipt of Congressionally-allocated funds and limiting the NIH’s ability to allocate these funds via grants and contracts, as I’ve described in Forbes. The Trump administration has also been flagging already funded reseach projects for having supposedly highly controversial words like “women” in them and cutting and terminating a number of them,

On top of that, the Trump administration has been taking steps to increase the control that U.S. President Donald Trump and his political appointees have over how NIH grants and contracts are selected, awarded and implemented. An example is the new White House Office of Management and Budget rule that Congress recently resolved to block at least until December 11, as I recently covered in Forbes. That OMB rule should it eventually be implemented would give the President even more power to use the $1 trillion or so funds issued in federal grants and contracts each year for his own agendas.

Will These NIH Funds Be Used For The War Against Iran?

In the Appropriations Committee Democrats statement, DeLauro did launch a three letter word that began with “w” and ended with “r” and rhymes with “more.” After emphasizing that the funds originally allocated to NIH “were provided for lifesaving medical research, not as extra money for the Department of Defense,” DeLauro’s statement went on to say, “It is no secret that the Department of Defense is facing enormous financial pressure because of President Trump’s war of choice with Iran. But the Trump administration cannot make American patients, families, and scientists pay the price.”

If you haven’t yet heard, the now six-month war against Iran has been costing American tax players kind of a lot of money. On July 21, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the Senate Appropriations Committee that the price tag had already reached around $37.5 billion. That’s getting close to the entire $47.22 billion budget for the NIH for all of fiscal year 2026. And unless the DoD has somehow found some coupons and Groupons to help defray those costs, that total has probably gotten even higher since. In fact, the Pentagon has requested an additional $95 billion in supplemental funding to help with the continuing war.

Diverting even more funds from biomedical research towards the DoD would be a short-sighted “lose the battle and lose the war” move for the United States. If you want to find a common enemy for all Americans, it’s medical conditions like infectious diseases and cancer—the things that are sure to cause suffering and prematurely end lives if much more scientific research isn’t done.