Three branches battle over funding

32:25budget is trying to rewrite the governmentwide rules that then gives them authority to say you can't get money. Congress is in the process of negotiating next the next fiscal year's appropriation bills right at the same time. and federal courts are weighing in on how much authorities the White House effectively has on cancelling existing awards. So all sort of three branches of government, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial are concurrently engaging in a battle to really define what happens here. >> The the comment period for the rule

33:06proposal changes is over. uh OM wants to set the statutory deadline for October 1st at which point this would then take plate this these new rules would go into place for fiscal year 2027. They're making the argument that this is about accountability. It is clearly not account about accountability because there's already systems in place to deal with that. Uh the real kind of issue is does the executive branch have the authority to make individual funding decisions within pro programs that Congress has already authorized? And again, this goes back to it's a

33:47fundamental constitutional question. >> Yeah. >> Because it literally goes counter to >> the structure of our co-equal branches of government. Yeah. So, will federal research continue to be evaluated under rules disclosed in advance, informed by expert review, and tied to programs funded by Congress, or will every grant now be contingent on the changing political priorities of whoever's in the White House? And it moves all the time. So, just because it stops for a 4year cycle or an 8year cycle does not mean it's then going to flip the other direction. And we cannot afford to have a seessaw problem in the what has made

34:31this country a huge part of what has made this country stable and successful uh and resilient is fact that how we won World War II is because we've done this funding uh in a way that's already been structured. >> Yeah. I [clears throat] mean you can go back to our America 250th anniversary episode, right? Like I think something like 80% of the stories that we covered were because of federal funding or because of like funding that came from taxpayer money somehow, right? And I'm sure a lot of those grants were awarded without political oversight. Okay? Because I doubt the the powers that be

35:14are going to understand why it's important to study bacterial immune systems. Okay? But then we get like restriction enzymes, genetic engineering crisper. Come on, guys. What are we doing? >> I don't want the people that did not understand that studies using transgenic mice >> Yeah. >> wasn't uh talking about the the gender of mice. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Like like you know what I mean? Like that's we can't >> Yeah. Transgen. And then they're like, >> "Guys, like, how they should not be in charge of of this kind of power. This is insane." >> We're going to keep you all updated on

35:54this process cuz it's happening in real time. Uh we will know more over the next couple of weeks. The one note that I'll make is this is not we're not passengers to this process and Congress is not particularly happy about this because whether Congress cares about the underlying science or not, Congress is not in the business of allowing the executive branch to take power away from them. >> Yes. Yeah. >> Period. And so it is now becoming a battle between the legislative and the executive. And it's a midterm election year. And so members of Congress are particularly