DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—A Democratic member of Congress has emerged as a vocal defender of the status quo at the National Institutes of Health and is the son of scientists connected to the embattled government agency.
Rep. Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts expressed opposition to the Trump administration’s cuts at the NIH at a House Energy and Commerce Committee markup on Feb. 25, arguing “curiosity-driven peer reviewed basic research is not meant to pass the politicians’ test.”
But Auchincloss may have a conflict of interest: his parents. Auchincloss’s father, Hugh Auchincloss, was an aide to National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci for 16 years. No run-of-the-mill bureaucrat, the senior Auchincloss steered intramural research at NIAID from 2014 to 2015 and stepped in as the acting director of NIAID from 2022 to…
