Marylana Saadeh Helou and Emily Chi Fogler, Members of the Firm in the Health Care & Life Sciences practice, were quoted in STAT News in “Trump Administration Seeks to Overhaul Federal Grantmaking Process, Alarming Researchers,” by Anil Oza. (Read the full version – subscription required.)
Following is an excerpt:
The Trump administration has released a sweeping proposal to overhaul the bedrock regulation for all federal grants, and in doing so is seeking to codify tighter political control of federally funded research.
"There is some thinking that once enacted in a regulation, these proposals would be harder to change in the future down the road, except through another notice and comment process. So they may be thinking about insulating some of these things from future administrations," said Emily Chi Fogler, a partner at the law firm Epstein Becker Green whose focus includes academic and clinical research.
Several of the proposed changes, experts said, could inject uncertainty into the work of federally funded researchers, and add roadblocks to the process of conducting research as scientists have known it. …
Under the new regulations, "challenging any kind of termination would be even harder than it has been," said Marylana Helou, a partner at Epstein Becker Green who has represented some researchers challenging grant terminations. OMB is "trying to avoid any kind of due process challenge by referencing all that language as to why they are allowed to include this new pathway for termination," she added.
