‘Springtime for Hitler’? Radical leftist wants Trump to embrace Nazi playbook on funding medical experiments

A Monday article in the American Prospect called for President Donald Trump to follow Adolf Hitler’s lead on funding medical experiments.

The article, “What Trump Could Learn from Hitler on NIH Funding” by Robert Kuttner, argued that even the genocidal dictator “knew to support German science, and not just for war.”

‘Even more nihilist than Hitler.’

Citing a February 7 policy statement from the National Institutes of Health, the article notes that the agency plans to implement a 15% funding limit on the indirect cost payments on university research grants.

The move to cut federally funded research grants is part of President Donald Trump’s effort to reduce the government’s wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars.

Indirect costs can include overhead expenses for research projects, such as equipment maintenance, facility upgrades, utility fees, accounting, and legal expenses. When a grant is awarded, additional federal funds — typically 27%-28% of the original award amount — are provided to cover indirect costs. The administration moved to implement a 15% limit on this additional funding.

The NIH noted that “most private foundations that fund research provide substantially lower indirect costs.” It added that the “most common rate” from foundations was 0%.

On Monday, Judge Angel Kelley issued a temporary restraining order against the NIH’s proposed cap after a group of 22 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit. There is a hearing scheduled for February 21.

Some universities pushed back on the NIH’s announcement. The University of Wisconsin-Madison contended that the reduced overhead funds would “significantly disrupt vital research activity and daily life-saving discoveries.”

The American Prospect took a more inflammatory approach, publishing an article that invoked Hitler to sensationalize the debate over NIH’s funding cap.

“Why is Trump doing this? Is this assault on NIH the war against the deep state on autopilot?” Kuttner wrote.

The American Prospect co-founder and co-writer claimed it was “one thing to trash” the U.S. Agency for International Development, referring to Trump’s efforts to reorganize the agency, “but it’s something else to destroy the world-class institutions that make America great, to coin a phrase.”

“Even Hitler did not trash German science,” Kuttner continued. “Hitler did seek to turn science to his own ends, to promote research on eugenics, new technologies for blitzkrieg war, sick medical experiments, and more efficient ways for the mass killing of Jews. Yet civilian German science, long a mark of German pride, also thrived. During the Nazi era, German scientists and engineers invented the first electron microscope, industrial-scale production of artificial fiber, pharmaceuticals such as advanced sulfa drugs, artificial rubber, and much more.”

Kuttner accused Trump of being “even more nihilist than Hitler.”

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