Mike's Blog

I’m writing this blog entry in the waning days of the current continuing resolution (CR) we are operating under which expires as of Friday (January 30) at midnight (technically Saturday, January 31 at 12:01AM). Things had been looking quite hopeful over the last several weeks. The USG funds itself with twelve appropriation bills. NIH is contained with the bill labeled Labor-H. Three of the twelve had been passed as part of the actions that ended the shutdown. Another three bills were passed during this CR. The House combined the remaining six bills into a ‘minibus’ and passed them as a package and then recessed (left town) for the remainder of the CR. It was then up to the Senate to consider the minibus to prevent a shutdown.

The recent snowstorm has been a minor hiccup, but the bigger concern is with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) which is one of the six bills in the minibus. Replacing the DHS bill with a CR was the simplest solution, and after negotiations between the White House and Democrats, this was the preferred choice. After another hiccup and several late nights, the Senate finally passed the ‘new’ five bill minibus with a CR last Friday evening. Unfortunately, even though the House has technically ‘passed’ these five bills as part of the six bill minibus, this minibus needs to pass the House which will trigger a shutdown at least for the early part of the first week in February. Hopefully, by the time you are reading this, things will have settled out and NIH can proceed forward with a full year appropriation. Keep in mind that any lack of communication earlier in the week was a consequence of the temporary shutdown.

In the midst of all these political machinations, we have some good news to report on N3C. Like the proverbial phoenix, N3C is rising again - or perhaps Lazarus is more appropriate. As discussed previously, the shutdown of N3C at the end of September 2025 had nothing to do with N3C itself. Rather, HHS is in the process of realigning how it obtains IT infrastructure. Instead of multiple agency specific instances from a single cloud vendor, HHS prefers to purchase infrastructure at the HHS level that would be available to any entity within HHS. Technical people are working now to bring everything back up in our new N3C instance. There will be some differences, but we hope by late February to be in a position to open N3C back up to the public. At the same time, new DTAs will be needed and will begin socializing the particulars. We hosted a community forum on January 26 that outlined much of the new aspects for N3C and plan on holding community forums quarterly.

Finally, unfortunately, 2026 is already shaping up to be a rough year. Overall compliance and adherence to NIH and HHS policies are being strictly enforced. At the same time, in addition to the extra effort that is required by PO and GM staff for every grant action, multiple court orders impacting subsets of states as well as public versus private institutions further impact subsequent grant actions. Please refrain from comparing your experience with others as there are multiple behind the scenes activities that are ongoing. My staff and GM are doing their best to move CTSA appropriations as quickly as possible.  

Had a great night last night. There was static on the radio and you couldn't hear a single political speech.
- Will Rogers, 1932