President Trump has directed his budget director to draft an executive order creating a political board with power over billions of dollars in National Institutes of Health (NIH) research grants, according to reporting on an Oval Office meeting between the two officials. The plan reportedly grew out of the administration's push to cut Harvard University's federal research funding, a push the NIH director himself declined to carry out.

For decades, NIH grant decisions have gone through scientific peer review before career officials make the final call. This proposed board would put that process under direct political control, giving appointees the ability to override scientists on which biomedical research gets funded, out of the $48 billion NIH distributes each year.

Congress has already pushed back once. Lawmakers from both parties recently included language in a stopgap funding bill temporarily blocking an earlier version of this plan, and a Senate Appropriations leader personally rejected it. State attorneys general and scientists have warned that letting politics decide which research gets funded threatens progress on treatments for cancer, Alzheimer's, and countless other diseases that don't care which university studies them or who is in power when the money moves.

This fight isn't about one university. It's about whether the country's medical research is judged on science or on political loyalty. Once appointees can block funding over a grudge, any lab, any disease, and any patient waiting on a cure could be next.

Congress and the NIH should reject this proposed board and keep grant decisions with scientific reviewers, not political appointees. Sign the petition to stop political control of NIH research funding, before a politically driven board decides whose research matters.