2026 letter to Sen. Rounds: why do you vote against cancer research?
An open letter to Sen. Mike Rounds, May 20, 2026.
A year ago I wrote my first open letter to you regarding your support of draconian cuts to cancer and other medical research by the Trump administration.
Your dismaying complicity in cutting billions of dollars of medical research already has resulted in severe and tragic consequences.
But first, back to July 2024, when you helped lead a bipartisan effort to increase research into brain cancer. You and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) introduced the BRAIN (Bolstering Research and Innovation Now) Act to strengthen research into understanding and treating brain tumors.
You said, “When my late wife Jean was courageously battling cancer, we were already seeing encouraging progress in the development of new treatments for many cancers. I firmly believe we are years, not decades, away from seeing cures to many of the most deadly cancers. [bold-face added]. The BRAIN Act will allow us to continue to capitalize on the progress we have made.”
Initially because of timing issues but then due to Trump’s election, the act still hasn’t passed.
Instead, according to the American Brain Foundation, in 2025 the federal government under President Trump cut “$2.3 billion from the annual budget for [NIH] research studies including $328 million for neuroscience research. These cuts have had many severe effects ... on national and international efforts to discover cures for conditions that affect billions of people.”
The cuts reduced research not only into brain cancer but into other diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and epilepsy.
And those were just the cuts to neuroscience research at NIH.
Pediatric cancer research has also been eviscerated.
In a New York Times op-ed on May 13, Zain Habboo, whose 6-year-old son died of kidney cancer, noted that pediatric cancer research has always been underfunded, but now it’s even worse.
She wrote, “That path to curing pediatric cancers is closing. Not because we have run out of ideas or new treatments to try, but because the Trump administration made a choice to cut funding for pediatric cancer research and undermine the institutions that once made America the envy of the world when it came to health innovation.”
In March, funding expired for the Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium, a 26-year-old network that provided children access to experimental treatments. Because of this, children will die.
These inexcusable cuts have happened not only on your watch but seemingly with your support.
Now, when you are facing re-election, you want to convince South Dakotans how much you care.
in February, Avera Health announced the federal appropriation of funds through the Labor Health and Human Services bill to “enhance its cancer care technology.” Your request for $10,175,000 in Congressional Directed Spending to update cancer care equipment in South Dakota was fulfilled.
No doubt you will use this in your campaign as “evidence” of your concern. But the cuts just to NIH were more than $2 billion, and that’s just a portion of the total defunding. In a time when government and university researchers have been fired, ongoing research abandoned, support staff laid off, labs closed, resources cut, hundreds of clinical trials cancelled, and international research partnerships dissolved, $10 million is not redemptive; it’s a pittance.
Ironically, a week after I began writing this letter, my husband, Jim Dawson, was diagnosed with kidney cancer. You might remember him. When you were governor, he was a science writer for Physics Today magazine at the American Institute of Physics. He interviewed you regarding the creation of the Sanford Underground Research Facility, perhaps your greatest achievement.
We mistakenly assumed your support for a high-level physics facility meant you understood the critical value of scientific research.
Now our family faces some challenging months. And it doesn’t help to know that kidney cancer and other urologic cancer research, both pediatric and adult, have been subjected to deep cuts.
In my previous letter I wrote:
Having grown up in the same era as you within blocks of your family, I hadn't been able to comprehend your lack of concern. The core value I was taught during my South Dakota childhood was compassion. But then I got it. You are up for re-election in 2026 and you, as well as such Republican senators as Dr. Cassidy of Louisiana and Susan Collins of Maine will do anything to avoid being primaried, even if it means bowing down to a president devoid of humanity.
Well, lucky you. Trump punished Dr. Cassidy and he lost his primary. So far Sen. Collins doesn’t have his endorsement for her re-election. I wonder why you got your endorsement so early and so easily.
It’s difficult to quantify the damage caused by the slashing of research, but one obvious result is the unnecessary suffering and deaths of millions of people, including children, not just here but across the world. Yet Trump is now asking Congress to cut another $5 billion from NIH for fiscal year 2027.
My desire is to ensure that every South Dakotan who has or has had cancer or watched loved ones suffer and die from any of the diseases for which research funding has been irrationally and cruelly decimated knows this basic reality: You, Sen. Rounds, sold them out for no other reason than your own political gain.
Misti Snow, a Pierre native and 1971 graduate of Riggs High School, is a retired author, editor, and teacher. She wrote for the Minneapolis Star Tribune for 20 years and then taught writing to international students, refugees, and immigrants in Virginia, where she lives. Her newspaper work was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and she’s a former Bush Leadership Fellow. Her family's roots date back to 1868 in the Dakota Territory. The original homestead is still owned and farmed by her Snow cousins in Gayville.
Photo: public domain, wikimedia commons
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