Congress Declares Its Opposition to Vought’s Latest Scheme

But Will Lawmakers Finally Act to Rein Vought In?

Top appropriators in Congress responded yesterday to White House OMB Director Russ Vought’s latest attempt to install political appointees as the final arbiters of congressionally appropriated grant money for scientific research.

“Republicans need to join us to put a stop to any effort by this administration to politicize what groundbreaking new treatments and cures we decide as a country to invest in,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), the top Democratic appropriator, said.

“The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) should not be involved in agency decisions on the awards of grants,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), the Republican chair of the appropriations committee, said.

The most recent scheme, as I wrote yesterday, involves an executive order — which is, reportedly, currently being drafted, to give political appointees control over spending on research by the National Institutes of Health. Vought, per the Washington Post, contends that NIH’s work remains too “woke.” Trump and Vought are both also annoyed, per Politico and the New York Times, that funding continues to flow from the agency to Harvard.

TPM’s interest in this story isn’t only about the fact that a politicization of NIH grants would be an authoritarian disaster — though it would be. It’s also that it is the latest chapter in a theme that has defined the Trump administration: expanding executive branch power, and marginalizing Congress — a campaign by Trump and his advisors to which the Republican-controlled legislature has largely acquiesced.

While Democrats denounced Vought’s power grab, the senator who really matters here is Collins, the top Republican on the appropriations committee. Collins, of course, is fighting for reelection in Maine, and her statement was relatively strong.

“Any attempt to politicize grantmaking at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), or any other agency, by another means — whether an Executive Order or guidance — is contrary to congressional intent,” she said.

“The Continuing Resolution — which passed the Senate, House, and was signed into law on September 2 – blocks OMB’s proposed rule or any substantially similar one,” she also noted.

Words, however, are cheap. As I wrote yesterday, the continuing resolution to fund the government, passed earlier this month, blocks the Trump administration from installing Trump’s political appointees to oversee research, but only does so until after the midterms. Republicans, Murray said last month, rejected a permanent block on the White House injecting itself into grantmaking.

This question will surface again after the midterms — and, likely, sooner, if this executive order sees the light of day, posing a direct challenge to Collins. We’ll see then if she, and Congress more generally, are willing to reassert their power of the purse in a lasting way.

Missouri Map Heads Back to the Supreme Court Yet Again

The Supreme Court has already twice weighed in on a fight that has been playing out in recent weeks in Missouri, after the state’s secretary of state, Denny Hoskins, chose the route of chaos by effectively ignoring a petition by voters to choose which map the state votes under. At issue are two maps — a 2022 one and a deeply gerrymandered one the state legislature passed in 2025 at Trump’s urging.

• The Supreme Court has twice effectively required the midterm elections to go forward under the 2022 map, and the state Supreme Court blocked the 2025 map. Many experts believed the issue was settled, at least until after the election.
• But an appeals court Monday night ruled that the state must use the 2025 map, opening a new chapter of this chaotic story. The state, Democracy Docket notes, has already distributed ballots.
• The appeals court reasoned that requiring voters to cast ballots in different maps in the primary and general elections — the outcome of Hoskins’ scheme to plow forward with primaries under the new map, despite the voter challenge to it — would violate the Constitution.
• An activist group that has been fighting the 2025 map for a year, People Not Politicians, is seeking emergency review from the Supreme Court.
• Big picture, the fight is over one congressional seat, focused on Kansas City, and the shape of others in the state. The 2025 map would likely flip that Kansas City seat, currently held by Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver, from Democratic to Republican.

Tabs

• Speaking of Susan Collins … an FBI probe of a defense contractor bribery scheme was on the cusp of investigating politicians of both parties who had accepted donations from the company in question — including, prominently, Susan Collins, ProPublica reports. Then Trump returned to the White House, and ended nearly all public corruption work at the DOJ.
• Trump and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani met yesterday and emerged before reporters with almost nothing but praise for each other, Politico reports.

Man of the Hour

It’s Sen. John Cornyn, who continues to create some drama — now by headlining a fundraiser in Dallas that will raise money for Republican Senate candidates in Maine, Ohio, Alaska, Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire and Minnesota. But not Texas, the state where Cornyn and his co-headliner, George W. Bush, are from, and where the fundraiser is being held. The Senate candidate there is Ken Paxton who — of course — beat Cornyn in the primary.

Are We at War?

Just as the Trump administration is trying to quiet the Iran war down before the midterms, Iran, per an MS NOW report, is trying to do the opposite: ramp it up, and drive oil prices as high as possible.