In this edition AcademyHealth’s Situation Report, we spotlight legislative, executive, and judicial actions that continue to shape the research landscape—including budget tensions, a controversial first MAHA report, an executive order to restore gold standard science, and a key ruling allowing removal of agency heads. Meanwhile, AcademyHealth has joined a federal lawsuit to restore vital public health data recently removed from federal websites. Researchers are encouraged to use our Supporter Toolkit to raise awareness and share their story if they have been affected by missing or altered health data.
In today’s issue:
- ICYMI: AcademyHealth Joins Lawsuit to Restore Public Health Data
- Why Data Access Is a Bipartisan Issue
- Senate Republicans Show Mixed Reactions to House Budget Bill
- MAHA Commission Releases Report on Children’s Health
- National Academies Begins Downsizing Amid Federal Contract Cuts
- Restoring Gold Standard Science Executive Order
- SCOTUS Rules in Favor of Presidential Removal of Agency Heads
- Judge Rules Must Restore Health Articles Scrubbed for Transgender Mentions
- ICYMI: Share Your Story with AcademyHealth
ICYMI: AcademyHealth Joins Lawsuit to Restore Public Health Data
AcademyHealth has joined a federal lawsuit to restore vital public health data recently removed from federal websites by the Trump Administration. This sweeping erasure affects key health information on topics like LGBTQ health, reproductive care, HIV/AIDS, and clinical trials—data that has saved lives and informed critical policy and care decisions.
How You Can Help:
- Spread the word: Use our Supporter Toolkit to raise awareness.
- Share your story: If you’ve been affected by missing or altered health data, submit your experience to further support the case.
- Donate to support our mission: Standing up for science and evidence has risks. By donating to AcademyHealth, you help sustain our ability to advocate for transparency, innovation, and progress in health research.
Publicly funded data belongs to all of us. Join us in standing up for access to trustworthy, life-saving information.
Why Data Access Is a Bipartisan Issue
In the latest installment of our blog series on data access, AcademyHealth Senior Director of Digital Health and Innovation Antara Aiama highlights how both sides of the political spectrum have historically advocated for the preservation and restoration of data and should continue to do so for the benefit of the public good. As we look ahead, maintaining data access requires proactive, collaborative efforts. Policymakers, researchers, and advocacy organizations like AcademyHealth can take concrete steps to develop bipartisan legislation protecting data accessibility, create standardized protocols for data preservation across administration changes, and build robust, platform-independent data repositories that can withstand political shifts to ensure that open data remains a protected, nonpartisan resource for future generations.
Senate Republicans Show Mixed Reactions to House Budget Bill
After narrowly passing the House last week, the GOP budget bill heads to the Senate where significant changes are likely to occur. At least four Republican Senators have stated they will not vote in favor of the bill in its current form, decrying the multi-trillion-dollar increase to the debt ceiling as incompatible with fiscal conservatism and fighting for more significant cuts to non-defense spending. The dissenting block would be enough to stop the bill from passing. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has started approaching the dissenters to mitigate their concerns.
On the other side of the Republican spectrum, some GOP Senators have expressed concern about the consequences of significant health care spending cuts, including reductions in Medicaid coverage, rural hospital closures, and increased out-of-pocket expenses for lower-income individuals. Other contentious topics expected to result in bill changes include proposed limitations on states’ abilities to regulate artificial intelligence, and clean energy tax credits. Over the weekend, Trump encouraged the Senate to work quickly to meet an arbitrary July 4th deadline for the reconciliation package.
MAHA Commission Releases Report on Children’s Health
The Trump administration released the MAHA Report last Thursday, providing the administration’s analysis on the drivers of chronic disease among the nation’s children. A product of the MAHA commission, chaired by HHS Secretary RFK Jr., the report is the culmination of months of private meetings of commission members, including leaders of the FDA, CDC, and NIH, as well as secretaries of the departments of veteran's affairs, education, agriculture, environmental protection, and other agencies. The report identified four major drivers of childhood chronic disease: poor diets high in ultra-processed foods, environmental chemical exposure, chronic stress and a lack of physical activity, and the overuse of medicine.
While experts generally agree on the impacts of poor nutrition, lifestyle, and exposure to pollution and harmful chemicals on children’s health, experts point to a lack of supporting evidence for certain claims and proposed solutions. For instance, the report calls into question the need for the number of vaccinations on the U.S. vaccine schedule and reiterates RFK Jr.’s criticism of the CDC’s vaccine safety monitoring efforts, despite no evidence that vaccines drive rates of childhood illness. Experts also worry that the report ignores other well-known drivers of chronic disease in children, such as poverty, maternal health, and preterm birth. In terms of implementing this report’s recommendations, experts warn that the MAHA Commission may be hindered by ignoring years of research on approaches that could work and by the Trump administration’s attempt to gut HHS departments dealing with chronic disease.
National Academies Begins Downsizing Amid Federal Contract Cuts
Amid a significant loss of federal funding, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) is planning a major reorganization to account for an estimated $40 million shortfall in terminated contracts. As the nation’s leading advisory body on scientific and technological issues, the NASEM has been routinely called upon by the federal government for more than 160 years to convene experts and produce independent, science-based guidance on the most important issues impacting the country. Cancelled projects included those focused on microplastics, traumatic brain injuries, microbial threats, pregnancy outcomes, and a CDC contract advising best practices for using personal protective equipment on farms to prevent human bird flu infections.s. Leaders believe there will still be a role for the independent, expert advice NASEM has provided to the federal government for over a century, but they concede that this will look different. While NASEM has let go of about 50 staff members, the organization has not made decisions on further terminations and is looking to raise a $5 billion endowment in the next 12 months.
Federal Judge Allows Case Against DOGE to Proceed
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan allowed a group of 14 states to move ahead with a lawsuit challenging Elon Musk's efforts to slash federal spending as the head of President Donald Trump's new government efficiency agency, rejecting the Trump administration's effort to dismiss the case. The states' lawsuit could proceed against Musk and DOGE because it made a plausible claim that Musk's cost-cutting activities were "unauthorized by any law," according to Chutkan's ruling in Washington, D.C., federal court.
Restoring Gold Standard Science Executive Order
In a recent executive order issued late last week, the president introduced the implementation of “Gold Standard Science,” defined in the order as science that is reproducible, transparent, communicative of error and uncertainty, collaborative and interdisciplinary, skeptical of its findings and assumptions, structured for falsifiability of hypotheses, subject to unbiased peer review, accepting of negative results as positive outcomes, and without conflicts of interest. Agencys heads, in consultation with the Directors of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), are directed to update any policies in their agencies governing scientific information accordingly.
Moreover, the executive order asserts that agency heads and employees are not to engage in scientific misconduct and are to make scientific and technological information produced or used by their agencies public where appropriate.
Research advocates have expressed concern that the executive order gives political appointees the power to determine how science is used in policy decisions. An open letter from Stand Up for Science has garnered more than 4300 signatures, condemning the ongoing attacks against science.
SCOTUS Rules in Favor of Presidential Removal of Agency Heads
The Supreme Court granted the Trump administration’s request to pause lower court orders requiring two independent federal agency officials—Gwynne Wilcox of the NLRB and Cathy Harris of the MSPB—to remain in office after Trump attempted to remove them. The Court’s unsigned order extended a previous administrative stay, reasoning that the government faced greater harm from allowing the officials to continue exercising executive power than the officials would suffer from being removed. The dispute centers on whether these removals violated federal law, as both appointees argue they can only be dismissed with reasonable cause. Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson, dissented strongly, criticizing the Court for effectively overriding established precedent and granting the President emergency relief without full judicial process. The case raises significant constitutional questions about presidential authority over independent agencies. The case continues to move through the court of appeals and may be revisited by the Supreme Court in the future.
Judge Rules Must Restore Health Articles Scrubbed for Transgender Mentions
In a recent ruling, a Boston U.S. District Court judge ruled that content authored by doctors and medical researchers that was previously removed from the patient safety resource Patient Safety Network (PSNet) be restored. The administration had removed the content from the website originally since it referenced people who are transgender in accordance with Executive Order #14168, which directed federal agencies to eliminate materials promoting “gender ideology” Among the research papers originally removed were those of the plaintiffs that studied suicide risk and endometriosis, both of which briefly mentioned transgender patient populations.
What researchers can do: The ruling is considered a victory in defense of the First Amendment and of vital health research and information. It also stands as an example of advocacy efforts from academics resulting in concrete change. Researchers should continue to pursue advocacy where and when they are able.
ICYMI: Share Your Story with AcademyHealth
AcademyHealth is collecting stories from across the health services research community to document the real-world impact of federal policy and funding changes. What happens when research is delayed, defunded, or derailed? What’s lost—for patients, for communities, for progress? Help us show policymakers and the public what’s truly at stake when research is sidelined. Your story can inform advocacy, spark action, and protect progress. Share your story here.
Previous Updates
This is the latest in a series of Situation Report updates from AcademyHealth. You can find prior issues here.
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