“Scientific research takes years to build, and it cannot be treated like a spigot – turned on and off at will to serve the Trump Administration’s efforts to balance the budget on the backs of veterans.”
WASHINGTON – Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), a Marine Corps combat veteran and member of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, along with Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Patty Murray (D-WA) expressed their deep concerns with the ongoing setbacks to medical research at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) as a result of VA Secretary Doug Collins’ cuts and policies at the Department, including his months-long hiring freeze on essential research staff.
READ MORE: Senators Call for VA to ‘Rebuild’ Research Efforts Amid Ongoing Hiring Delays
“Mr. Secretary, your hiring freeze has brought real-life impacts and pain upon our veterans – and reversing your hiring freeze for these positions months later is not enough to undo this harm,” the Senators wrote in a letter to Secretary Collins. “VA researchers often work on 2- or 3-year appointments – “not to exceed” (NTE) contracts – which, as long as the researcher has funding, are typically rolled over into new appointments. Due to your hiring freeze, essential researchers whose terms were ending soon were shown the door and forced to abandon often lifesaving work, and their positions were unable to be backfilled. These actions damaged veterans’ access to cutting-edge treatments and clinical trials.”
The Senators cited specific examples of how the Trump VA’s hiring freeze impeded veterans’ access to critical clinical trials, including those aimed at preventing dementia and heart disease, better predicting veterans’ stroke risk, studying advanced cancers, and a substance use disorder study.
The Senators urged Collins to “rebuild this cornerstone of the United States’ medical research enterprise” by rehiring VA researchers whose terms were not extended due to the hiring freeze; addressing the backlog of research positions that were frozen but are now able to be hired again; coordinating with the National Institutes of Health to restore cancelled grants for VA researchers; and allowing researchers to publish their findings without the unprecedented step of preapproval by political appointees.
The Senators also emphasized their concerns around the prospect of politicizing VA research: “We are also concerned by reports that VA research studies may now have to be approved by political appointees before publication in academic journals. Please clarify to Congress, VA research employees, and veterans that no political appointees will be involved in approving or censoring the publication of research studies. Such clarification will support the historically bipartisan nature of VA research and help assure current and future VA researchers that VA will not censor the work of the talented staff it employs.”
The Senators concluded: “Scientific research takes years to build, and it cannot be treated like a spigot – turned on and off at will to serve the Trump Administration’s efforts to balance the budget on the backs of veterans. The consequences of your hiring freeze – and the resulting backlog in hiring VA research staff – could be severe and long-lasting. You still have the chance to correct course by immediately rehiring wrongly terminated researchers, working with OPM to quickly address the backlog in research staff hiring, coordinating with other agencies to restore all grants revoked from VA researchers, and assuring current and future VA researchers that their research will not be subject to political review.”
Read the Senators’ letter HERE.
7/21/25