Ames Grawert

@amescg

Senior Counsel at the Brennan Center, working on criminal justice policy and understanding the impact of federal funding cuts. Hopefully building a better world for everyone, especially two little girls. Views my own, dad jokes and sci-fi takes welcome.

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Ames Grawert@amescg· Jun 17

Great article explaining how centralizing power in the presidency does real damage to American society -- in this case, by threatening the future of scientific research.

Atlantic text: Elias Zerhouni, the National Institutes of Health director under President George W. Bush, earlier this year described what’s at stake. “When I was at NIH, it never occurred to me that I could say we’re not paying for something that Congress had appropriated money for because it was not in line with my policies,” he said. “But if that power is given to the executive branch to use whenever it wants, then all bets are off.”

Ames Grawert@amescg· Jun 10

For everyone else who became a parent in the middle of the pandemic: Hopefully our kids won’t believe us when we tell them what the world was really like in their first year of life. Hopefully we can give them something better. Wishing that future for all of us. www.instagram.com/p/DZScQitAXc...

Instagram post from Dr. Becky:

Dear parents of covid-babies graduating kindergarten,
Everybody's about to make a big deal about your kid. The little cap, the certificate, the song they've been practicing for weeks.
Good, they should!
But there's something else too. You.
Give me a moment to make a big deal about you.

Ames Grawert@amescg· May 18

ICYMI: Federal funding cuts and mass firings will undercut both economic growth and American scientific leadership. A new @brennancenter.org analysis based on conversations with scientists and policy experts around the country.

Even if the administration could claim to be economizing or pursuing necessary reforms, doing so unilaterally, without regard for Congress’s role, undercuts the stability that creates these economic returns on investment. Robert E. Rubin, a senior counselor at Centerview Partners who served as the U.S. Treasury secretary from 1995 to 1999, told us:

Separation of powers and the rule of law are more than abstract concepts; they’re a powerful competitive advantage for the United States in the global economy. Unpredictable, unilateral presidential decisions risk undermining that great strength. The sciences are one particularly strong example where taxpayer-funded research created and now helps power the American economy. Deep cuts to that funding inject uncertainty into American business and risk depriving us of billions of dollars in future innovations, medicines, and consumer products.

Ames Grawert@amescg· May 14

Lasting reforms have to be done legally — and that means by working with Congress, not ignoring it.

But the law is inherently reactive, slow to intervene, and imperfect. As a case in point, late last year the Supreme Court allowed the administration to proceed with more than $750 million in NIH grant cancelations while litigation continues, citing procedural requirements.

Other legal issues also remain unresolved. Congress balked at and then rejected the administration’s proposed budget cuts for FY 2026, instead increasing NIH funding in a January 2026 appropriations bill. But it remains to be seen whether the NIH and NSF will spend the money as Congress directed. Early signs are not encouraging, prompting continued uncertainty even if funding eventually materializes in full.

Restoring the rule of law as a guarantor of stability for American research institutions and businesses will not be easy. Rebuilding the vital trust between the government, the scientific community, and the private sector innovators, students, workers, and grantees who benefit from that relationship may take years. But both are possible.

At a minimum, Congress and the courts should reject the administration’s effort to usurp the legislature’s power of the purse. Specifically, lawmakers should continue to deny the administration’s attempts to cut research funding and watch carefully to ensure that appropriated funds are spent fairly and fully. Beyond that, leaders in both parties should seek to ensure that federal support for scientific research is properly structured to best promote the security, health, and prosperity of all Americans for the decades to come.

Ames Grawert@amescg· May 14

The status quo wasn’t perfect. There’s no shortage of good ideas for reforming and improving federal science grants and the agencies that administer them. But that’s not what the Administration is achieving.

In the words of Arati Prabhakar, the former head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, who was consulted for this analysis:

Ignoring congressional authority over publicly funded research means that even in areas where lawmakers or the courts have directed the restoration of funding, that is only part of the story. By then, multiyear clinical trials have seen years of data collection invalidated, and patients who need lifesaving care have been abandoned. Canceled grants have in many cases still not been restored even after court action, and the message has been sent to students that open inquiry is no longer tolerated, and to foreign-born researchers, women, and people of color that contributions are not welcome. And the consequences of all that for our future health, security, and prosperity are profound.

Ames Grawert@amescg· May 14

Patients also saw their lives disrupted. Medical publications estimated 1 in 30 clinical trials were impacted by frozen or canceled funding, disrupting care for up to 74,000 people.

The impact on patients is more dire still. Lost funding halted or interrupted active trials of promising new medical treatments. These clinical trials give patients access to cutting-edge therapy and represent the gold-standard method for testing new treatments and medicines. According to a study by the American Medical Association’s peer-reviewed journal of internal medicine, grant terminations during 2025 initially halted funding for 383 of these trials — or 1 in 30 such experiments. Roughly 74,000 patients may have been exposed to uncertainty or even lost access to treatments from funding disruptions. That is before accounting for clinical trials funded by the now-shuttered U.S. Agency for International Development and other agencies.

Ames Grawert@amescg· May 14

Many researchers have had their careers upended and work destroyed, sometimes literally. Arbitrary government power, they say, creates a level of uncertainty that makes good science impossible, even when funding is restored.

Quote from anonymous NIH researcher:

It is a disheartening time to be a biomedical researcher. Colleagues have lost their funding for no clear reason. Training programs to produce the next generation of researchers have been slashed. The program officers at NIH who traditionally help us to craft and submit fundable proposals are losing their jobs and feeling demoralized due to the frequent leadership changes, addition of suspicious new layers of bureaucracy, and delays. Universities with strong biomedical research enterprises are wondering how they will fund their infrastructures and continue their cutting-edge scientific work.

Ames Grawert@amescg· May 14

Federal investments in R&D return $12.50 for every dollar spent and helped build the modern economy. Illegal funding freezes and grant cancellations sweep power to the executive while making it impossible for researchers to do their jobs and for businesses to make investment decisions.

Quote from Bob Rubin:

Separation of powers and the rule of law are more than abstract concepts; they’re a powerful competitive advantage for the United States in the global economy. Unpredictable, unilateral presidential decisions risk undermining that great strength. The sciences are one particularly strong example where taxpayer-funded research created and now helps power the American economy. Deep cuts to that funding inject uncertainty into American business and risk depriving us of billions of dollars in future innovations, medicines, and consumer products.

Ames Grawert@amescg· Apr 28

The NSF grantmaking curves at Grant-Witness are really stark. grant-witness.us/funding_curv...

Grant-Witness graph showing NSF wards essentially flat this fiscal year, under 1,000, whereas under previous administrations they were in 3-4,000 range by this time.

Ames Grawert@amescg· Mar 17

Did I catch that OMB approved NIH apportionments essentially... during that hearing? But no word on NSF? @jeremymberg.bsky.social (This is a rush AI generated transcript)

Ames Grawert@amescg· Mar 12

While we're talking about contested straits, worth remembering that in the final siege of Constantinople, Sultan Mehmet II successfully transported parts of his navy over land, dropping them behind the City's defenses and helping seal its fate.

Painting with a medieval aesthetic showing a large sailing vessel being transported over wooden skids on land. Another two are being moved similarly in the background. The image is stamped "Ottoman Imperial Archives."

Ames Grawert@amescg· Feb 2

End of an era! I've had this ink bottle for longer than I've been married. So many notebook pages full of cerulean blue...

An empty bottle or Iroshizuku Kon-Peki on a red leather desk, next to a crimson Nakaya fountain pen being held up by a plastic crab figurine. The crab is a famous fountain pen accessory popularized by Ahnitol. This is one of the originals, accept no substitutes.

Ames Grawert@amescg· Nov 25

NEW: In a new amicus brief, law enforcement officials argue that boundaries around how local police interact with federal immigration enforcement are indispensable to building public trust with local communities. Read their brief here: www.brennancenter.org/media/14752/...

Ames Grawert@amescg· Aug 9

Me trying to design and 3d print my own fountain pen parts

Drew Janda tweet —

The haters said I couldn't do it. And they were correct. Honestly great call from the haters

Ames Grawert@amescg· Jul 31

Some claim that the private sector can replace government funding for science. That's flatly wrong — as Dr. Prabhakar explains from her experience on both sides of the relationship.

The loss of continued, stable support for American sciences would further be
devastating to our global economic competitiveness. The innovation and
dynamism of American businesses rely on government-supported foundational
research to create cutting-edge technologies like the ones identified above. But
businesses do not fund a sufficient base of fundamental research on their own due
to the scale, uncertain returns, and extended timelines involved.
38 Instead, multipronged, system-level government efforts that involve dedicated research funding
are necessary to tackle the most pressing problems our nation faces, such as
maintaining economic competitiveness and national security during tremendous

geopolitical change, and improving the health of Americans.
39 Neither
philanthropy nor the private sector is likely to take up that mantle.
40 Even if
entities in the private sector were financially capable of shouldering the cost of
foundational scientific research, they lack the broad expertise in public missions,
coordinated vision, and economies of scale to realize it on their own.
Any response that federal money preempts private investment—so as to fill
the gap left following a government retreat from the sector—is incorrect. Such an
argument misunderstands the complementarity between private and public
investment that makes American science and innovation work. In fact, federal
funding for scientific research expands the opportunity for private sector
investment41 because innovative American technologies and companies build on

Ames Grawert@amescg· Jul 31

A former Cabinet official and venture capitalist, Dr. Prabhakar walks through the funding freeze's immediate impact on American scientific leadership and business, situating them in the context of the administration's "broader cuts to investment in scientific research"