It’s not entirely clear how this will work in a practical sense. During the Biden administration, the NIH funded more than 64,000 grants a year. As heads of their respective agencies, Vought and Bhattacharya presumably have other duties and would be hard-pressed to seriously evaluate each proposal. Presumably the committee would also act only after funding decisions have been made. However, in the absence of a system to shift funding to other grants, there is a risk that the NIH will not be able to spend all the money allocated to it by Congress (which may well be Vought’s intention).
In the past, the NIH determined funding by ranking grants based on scientific merit scores assigned by expert reviewers. That system provides an obvious way to transfer money from rejected grants to the highest quality unfunded proposals. But Vought has also attempted to limit the use of peer review when evaluating grants, leaving it unclear whether such a system would remain viable.
Ultimately, this measure will almost certainly be rejected by the courts, as it clearly fits the key standard for illegal administrative actions: arbitrary and capricious. It doesn’t solve any problem, it’s not required by law, and it’s hard to imagine a legal justification for it. (“Vought wants to stop the NIH from spending its budget” is not a legal justification.)
But for the policy to go to court, someone will first have to prove that they are injured enough to have the right to sue. As with so many other actions by the administration, that means the pending executive order could do a lot of damage before the courts can intervene.
