The Brief

The Trump administration is slashing long-standing areas of research funded by the National Institutes of Health, claiming they no longer align with the agency's priorities.

The latest target?

Millions of dollars in NIH grants for studying vaccine hesitancy and how to improve immunization levels. It's work that's particularly relevant as a measles outbreak grips the Southwest amidst diminishing vaccination rates.

In recent weeks, scientists around the country have begun receiving letters stating their existing grants — money already awarded to them in a competitive process — were being cut.

At first, the cuts appeared to primarily target research on LGBTQ+ health and other areas that were deemed in conflict with President Trump's executive orders on gender and "diversity, equity and inclusion."

Now, more than 40 grants related to vaccine hesitancy have been cancelled, and there are mounting concerns that research on mRNA vaccines could be on the chopping block next.

NPR obtained information about the changes from two NIH staffers and one person familiar with NIH's activities who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. And, NPR reviewed emails and documents they provided.

"I want to underscore just how unprecedented — how abnormal all of this is," one longtime NIH official told NPR. "This is not how we operate."

An email circulated among NIH leadership this week included a list of grants that were to be terminated and details on the specific language to use in those notices. "It is the policy of NIH not to prioritize research activities that focuses gaining scientific knowledge on why individuals are hesitant to be vaccinated and/or explore ways to improve vaccine interest and commitment," the email states.

It's unclear exactly how many grants have been cancelled in total under the Trump administration. Neither the NIH nor its parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, replied to NPR's request for comment.

"It appears that there are forces intent on destroying our existing vaccine enterprise," says Dr. Jonathan Temte, a professor of family medicine at the University of Wisconsin who studies vaccine hesitancy. "Defunding research on vaccine hesitancy is the latest example of this effort."

mRNA research may be at risk

In what some at the agency view as an ominous sign, the NIH's acting director Dr. Matthew Memoli also requested information last week about the funding that supports mRNA vaccine research, technology that underpins the COVID-19 shots from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, according to an email reviewed by NPR. A similar call for data preceded the termination of the other vaccine grants.

"NIH staff internally are very worried that the mRNA grants will follow the outcome of the vaccine hesitancy grants and be terminated," according to one of the NIH employees who wasn't authorized to speak publicly. "There are widespread concerns that this will limit the ability to combat pandemics and halt promising lifesaving cancer treatments."

NPR reviewed the NIH list of 130 of these awards issued by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or NIAID, which funds the most mRNA research. This includes efforts to develop vaccines for a variety of diseases, including Lyme disease, dengue and a sometimes life-threatening gastrointestinal infection known as Clostridium difficile.

Other parts of the NIH like the National Cancer Institute also fund this work, because mRNA technology holds promise for targeted cancer treatment.

"I am on pins and needles constantly," says Justin Richner, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Illinois, Chicago. "I'm really kind of waiting for the shoe to drop in terms of looking for the email saying the grant has been canceled."

Richner's $1 million, 4-year NIH grant is on the agency's internal list. His lab is working to develop an mRNA vaccine to protect against dengue, a mosquito-borne viral disease that affects millions of people worldwide and is spreading in the U.S.

"It's an outrageous incursion on the way in which the NIH is managing the money that's been appropriated by Congress," says Dr. Harold Varmus, a Nobel Prize winning professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College who ran the NIH from 1993 to 1999. "The idea that we're going to turn one of the most prestigious aspects of federally supported activities into a graveyard is very troubling to everybody."

Aaron Scherer, a researcher at the University of Iowa who studies vaccine hesitancy, says his grants are not canceled as far as he knows, but given what's happening, he assumes that NIH will not be funding his future proposal "regardless of its scientific and health merits."

Health disparities and LGBTQ+ research loses ground

Vaccine research is just the latest target in the Trump administration's expanding effort to cut off NIH-funded researchers.

A first wave of letters went out last month to researchers notifying them their grants were being canceled because they did not fit with President Trump's executive orders.

Letters of termination reviewed by NPR state "no modification of the project could align the project with agency priorities," but a current NIH employee told NPR that the scientific staff at their institute who would be responsible for making that determination are not being consulted. "They're not checking with us," said the person, adding that these termination decisions are coming with virtually no notice.

According to an internal memo, NIH staff were directed to separate awards into different categories depending, for example, on whether the "sole purpose of the project is DEI related" or could still be viable if modified.

The guidance also has implications for hundreds of awards in the coming months, because many "Notices of Funding Opportunities" have been taken down, and grants that applied through those notices will not get their funding, either, the NIH staffer told NPR.

Brittany Charlton, who directs the LGBTQ Health Center of Excellence at Harvard University, says she's tallied two dozen awards that have been terminated among her colleagues for work that touches on issues like HIV prevention and Alzheimer's.

The cuts are not only affecting research on the LGBTQ+ population but also other vulnerable communities, she says.

"We're not studying fringe issues, and they're not at all ideological either," Charlton says, "The research that's being abruptly terminated by the federal government right now is really meant to identify what underlies some of these disparities and help to address them."

Have information you want to share about the ongoing changes across the federal government? Reach out to these authors via encrypted communications: Will Stone @wstonereports.95 and Rob Stein @robstein.22.

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Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman promised at a Tuesday night town hall that MacArthur Park will see “amazing progress” in public safety before the 2028 Olympic Games.

Several community members told LAist they have seen crime return to the Los Angeles park after months of joint drug enforcement operations by the Los Angeles Police Department and federal agencies. Those efforts led to dozens of arrests for alleged drug sales in the area.

An LAPD captain attending the town hall confirmed to LAist that the department is aware of renewed safety problems.

Hochman acknowledged those concerns and said the recent operations made progress and created an opportunity for lasting change.

“If we keep this focus and the energy on this area, MacArthur Park, Skid Row and everything in between,” Hochman said, “then we will see amazing progress before the Olympics, and that is actually a promise.”

Hochman previously promised, during a drug enforcement operation on June 4, to have a picnic at the park on Labor Day. Hochman told attendees he kept that promise when he held an event at the park on Sept. 5 with other local and federal law enforcement officials.

As district attorney, Hochman works with law enforcement agencies to prosecute criminal cases in L.A. County. He said that it will take more work from policymakers and community members to remove the open-air drug market that has been entrenched there for decades.

The area is represented by L.A. City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, County Supervisor Hilda Solis, state Assemblymember Mark González and state Sen. María Elena Durazo. Staff members from some of those offices, and the mayor’s office, sat in on the town hall organized by the local nonprofit California Rising.

“Feel free to put the fire under the feet of our politicians,” Hochman told about two dozen residents who attended. “All too often it is easy to spend some effort on something and then get distracted and spend some effort somewhere else.”

'Temporary' relief

Some residents and business owners agreed with Hochman that the large-scale drug enforcement operations from March through June made the area feel safer, at least for a while.

“It was temporary, but we got to see, actually, families at the bus stops with their kids — before it wasn't like that,” Elaine Alaniz told LAist Tuesday. “I think it does help us, but on the other hand I still think that we need more help. It's not just a one, two, three-day thing.”

Alaniz lives nearby and is the president of the Westlake North Neighborhood Council, which begins a block northeast of MacArthur Park.

She said she has seen some crime move away from the park and into the surrounding neighborhoods.

Capt. Ben Fernandes, who leads LAPD’s Rampart Division, said the earlier operations were successful, but there have been some setbacks.

“We made a lot of headway in the beginning,” he said. “There are some issues that we've had some repopulation, especially with addicts.”

Fernandes said that the department will continue to arrest people suspected of selling drugs near the park, while connecting people who are addicted with services to help them get sober and off the streets.

A call for community involvement

Hochman and Fernandes each emphasized that making MacArthur Park a safe and welcoming place can’t be done by law enforcement alone.

“My advice: take the park back — it's your park,” Hochman said at the town hall, calling for community organizations to plan regular outings there. “That starts to send a message that the community really cares about this park.”

He asked that performers like Justin Bieber, who played an impromptu set in the park last month, have more events there as well.

Fernandes said people can get involved to change perceptions about MacArthur Park so it's no longer thought of as a place to go to score drugs.

“What we need to do is — we as a community — come together and show [people using drugs] that it's not their place to go,” he said. “That you're going to be there with your children, with your parishioners, with your friends, with your family.”

Inglewood city officials are launching an audit of their financial relationship with SoFi Stadium and claiming the stadium could owe years of ticket taxes, one month after a judge voided the 2015 contract that brought the stadium to Inglewood. 

The Inglewood City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to commission the audit. Mayor James Butts said the move is a necessary next step after the court ruling, which threw the terms of the financial relationship between the city and Hollywood Park stadium development into question. 

Millions of dollars are at stake for both the city and the stadium businesses. City officials say that the ruling means a cap that limited the amount of admissions tax that Inglewood could collect no longer applies. They also plan to investigate the authenticity of $376 million worth of infrastructure bills Hollywood Park claims the city owes. The findings of the audit could also factor into discussions of how the city will address its current $30.8 million deficit.

The City Council motion — put forward by Butts and co-sponsored by Councilmember Dionne Faulk — requires the city attorney to retain an accounting firm to conduct the audit and report back to the public on its findings within 30 days. It set aside $325,000 from the city’s General Fund to pay for the audit. You can read the city’s full explanation of the audit here.

Butts, who was at the city’s helm a decade ago when developer Stan Kroenke brought his Hollywood Park pitch to Inglewood, said city officials built what they thought was a partnership with their stadium counterparts.

But that partnership has crumbled. Since last summer, the city and stadiums have been slugging it out in a complex series of court cases over the stadium’s contract and Inglewood’s network of video billboards. The conflict has spilled over into the Nov. 3 election via ballot measures that would change the city’s commercial advertising and ticket tax rules. 

The audit approved by the City Council on Tuesday will dig into the entire financial relationship between the stadium and city since 2015, unpacking what is owed and what was received from taxes on everything from tickets to parking. City officials plan to continue auditing the taxes on a quarterly basis into the future.

Still, it’s not guaranteed the city would be able to force the stadium development to pay any debt the audit does claim. Hollywood Park could still appeal the court ruling that voided its contract with Inglewood, while Butts said the city wants to negotiate a new contract to replace it. 

A Hollywood Park spokesperson said the stadium development has lived up to its financial obligations, including paying all of its taxes.

“This is yet another thinly veiled attempt to distract from scrutiny surrounding the City’s own fiscal mismanagement and the questionable actions of its Mayor,” the spokesperson wrote in a statement.

Some locals at Tuesday’s meeting said during public comments they were baffled why the city hadn’t set up an audit process earlier.

“We have needed an audit from day one. We can’t sit here and claim we didn’t know or have an inkling what we were doing with Hollywood Park,” Diane Sambrano said. 

Exterior of Sofi Stadium in Inglewood

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Gary Coronado

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The LA Local

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Speaking during the meeting, Butts said the audit was triggered because of the void left by the development agreement and because major events including the 2027 Super Bowl and 2028 Olympics are about to hit Inglewood.

The mayor first claimed the development agreement was illegal in a letter written directly to Stan Kroenke last year, saying the city’s lawyers made the determination while researching billboard litigation.

Millions in tax revenue at stake

After the judge ruled in agreement with the city, Butts told The LA Local that city officials were still researching the specific implications of the court’s ruling. In Tuesday’s council motion, city staff highlighted what they say is one major change they’ve discovered: There’s no longer a limit on how much admissions tax the city can collect.  

Inglewood collects a 10% tax on tickets sold at SoFi Stadium, but the 2015 initiative that brought the stadium to the city put a cap on that revenue, starting at $15 million a year and increasing annually with inflation. 

The admissions tax cap also happens to be the subject of the current ballot Measure AT. WOW Media, the billboard operator allied with the city in its dispute with the stadium, is funding a campaign in favor of the initiative.

Admissions tax has been a sizable revenue stream for the city — bringing in an average $20 million a year since SoFi Stadium opened — but city officials have said it could be significantly bigger. A city analysis of Measure AT estimated that getting rid of the cap could bring in as much as an extra $50 million in future years. The city did not estimate how much admissions tax revenue it has missed out on while the development agreement was in effect.

The Inglewood audit seeks to clarify basic questions about how taxes are assessed on ticket sales and whether those taxes are actually forwarded to the city. Officials say it will provide transparency about ticket sales, pricing and fees, which have been heavily scrutinized in recent years across the state. 

Gray gets support on proposal for future billboard revenue audit

Councilmember Gloria Gray attempted to amend the audit motion Tuesday, asking the city manager to also audit the revenue the city gets from billboard fees.

“I believe the same standard of financial transparency should apply to every city agreement,” Gray said.

Though her motion didn’t receive a second, Councilmember Eloy Morales said he’d support putting a billboard revenue audit on the council’s agenda in the future. 

“I think we all support all those audits,” Morales said. 

Gray’s move was a rarity for a council that seldom debates motions during public meetings and almost always votes unanimously. The councilmember is currently running for mayor against Butts.

Inglewood pulls in as much as $8 million a year from billboards, according to budget records. Much of that comes from a series of deals the city cut with WOW Media, allowing the billboard company to construct and operate the billboards on public medians and sidewalks. In return, WOW gives the city a cut of ad revenue along with other concessions.

The post Inglewood is investigating if SoFi Stadium owes years’ worth of ticket taxes appeared first on LA Local.