The Republican-led House Appropriations Committee has released a spending bill for 2026 that quietly ignores an $18 billion cut to the National Institutes of Health that President Donald Trump proposed earlier this year.

The proposed budget bill, released Sept. 2, calls for $48 billion in NIH funding for fiscal 2026, which would keep funding levels for the agency in line with what it has received in the last few years. The bill stands in opposition to the 40% cut President Trump outlined for the NIH in a budget proposal released in June.

In a fact sheet on the bill, House Appropriations Committee members wrote that providing $48 billion in NIH funding will “maintain America’s edge in basic biomedical research cures to cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and rare diseases and supports the Trump administration’s priority of increasing research for other chronic diseases impacting Americans.”

The bill, however, does call for a $7 billion budget cut to HHS, which is about 6% less than 2025 levels. It proposes a 19% cut to the CDC “and streamlining 35 duplicative and controversial programs,” positioning the agency to focus solely on infectious disease. It would also eliminate the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The proposal puts several billion in funding toward primary care, the healthcare workforce and rural health.

The bill will likely be a key point of discussion among lawmakers as they work to meet a Sept. 30 funding deadline and avert a government shutdown.

Here are three more updates:

1. Trump administration to restore deleted public health data: The Trump administration has agreed to restore a range of public health and science webpages that were removed earlier this year following executive orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion programs. The restoration comes as part of a legal settlement with a coalition of medical and public health groups, which sued the administration in May for what they described as unlawful removal of vital health information.

The affected pages include resources on HIV, opioid use, reproductive health and LGBTQ+ care. Plaintiffs argued the removals undermined care delivery and violated federal transparency rules. Under the settlement, HHS must reinstate all identified webpages that have not yet been restored.

2. HHS former, current staff call for RFK Jr. resignation: More than 1,000 current and former HHS employees issued a Sept. 3 letter to Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and members of Congress, urging his resignation and warning that his leadership “endangers the nation’s health by spreading inaccurate health information.” The letter also urged reaffirmation of the CDC’s “scientific integrity” and called for a safety guarantee of the HHS workforce.

The letter pointed to the Aug. 27 firing of CDC director Susan Monarez, PhD, after she refused to resign from her role over scientific and public health disputes with Mr. Kennedy. Her removal resulted in the resignation of multiple senior CDC leaders. The letter also claimed that Mr. Kennedy has appointed proponents of vaccine misinformation, refused briefings from certain CDC experts on vaccine-preventable diseases, disregarded President Donald Trump’s “Restoring Gold Standard Science in America” executive order, rescinded the FDA’s COVID-19 vaccine authorizations without transparency, denigrated the American Academy of Pediatrics for recommending children the COVID-19 vaccine, spread false claims about hospital and physician liability for following vaccine guidance and disregarded the HHS workforce.

“Secretary Kennedy has been clear: the CDC has been broken for a long time. Restoring it as the world’s most trusted guardian of public health will take sustained reform and more personnel changes,” HHS communications director Andrew Nixon said in a Sept. 3 statement shared with Becker’s. “From his first day in office, he pledged to check his assumptions at the door — and he asked every HHS colleague to do the same. That commitment to evidence-based science is why, in just seven months, he and the HHS team have accomplished more than any health secretary in history in the fight to end the chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.”

Editor’s note: At 9:45 a.m. CDT on Sept. 3, the letter had received 1,040 signatures.

3. CMS details rural health fund application: On Sept. 2, CMS unveiled further information regarding the Rural Health Transformation Program, which is part of the recently passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act and provides $50 billion over five years to help strengthen healthcare access, quality and outcomes in rural areas.

Of the $50 billion given to states, $10 billion will be available annually from fiscal 2026 through fiscal 2030. Fifty-percent will be distributed equally among the states while another 50% will be provided by CMS based on rural population, rural health facility infrastructure and capacity and other factors to be determined by CMS.

The funds will also support preventative care, chronic disease management, behavioral health and healthcare workforce recruitment, while also investing in innovative care models and technology like telehealth and cybersecurity. Applications will open through a notice of funding opportunity in mid-September and close in early November. Awards will be issued by Dec. 31.

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