Billions in NIH grants could be jeopardized by appointments snafu, Republicans say

The Biden administration allegedly failed to correctly reappoint more than a dozen top-ranking National Institutes of Health leaders, House Republicans say, raising questions about the legality of billions in federal grants doled out by those officials over the last year. 

Their claim, detailed Friday in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, obtained by CBS News, follows a monthslong probe led by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the Republican chair of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, into vacancies at the agency.

"The failure to reappoint the above NIH IC Directors jeopardizes the legal validity of more than $25 billion in federal biomedical research grants made in 2022 alone," the committee wrote.