I’m concerned about the President’s use of executive orders to cancel National Institutes of Health grants (dollars) already appropriated by Congress to fund medical research at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. The amount reported is 33 million. UI Interim Vice President for Research Lois Geist has “deferred new activities” (as reported in the Gazette, 2/15/25, 5A). There is a “freeze on graduate assistant hiring” (Gazette, 2/15/25, 5A). People’s lives are at risk. Why would prospective medical students want to attend UI if they can’t pursue medical research?

Background: Appropriations approved by Congress can be changed only by Congress. The president has used executive orders to cancel NIH medical research dollars. Personally, I want my tax dollars to be spent on medical research in Iowa at the University of Iowa.

Readers: Consider the cost of losing medical research right here in Iowa at the hospital most everyone I know has needed at one time or another versus the imperative to cut federal spending.

“The 1974 Impoundment Control Act set up a detailed process for what a president could and could not do when disagreeing over whether to spend money that Congress had approved” (Gazette, 2/12/25, 5A).

Readers: I am learning as I go. Congress appropriates (tax collected) dollars to states and programs that help Americans in one way or another. Every state has “wants” and over the years, federal dollars have been appropriated across the country. Who knew that medical research right here in Iowa would be halted and disrupted when President Trump was elected? I didn’t, but now I do.

Readers: We have to choose what we value and follow through. I value health care and I value medical research here in Iowa. I value a representative government, not a president who disregards Congress; otherwise, what are Ashley Hinson, Chuck Grassley, and Joni Ernst doing in Washington DC? Why pay them salaries and provide health care for them if they aren’t doing the jobs they were elected to do?

-Gretchen Reeh-Robinson

Mount Vernon