A National Institutes of Health employee who was placed on paid leave after organizing a public letter criticizing the Trump administration said Friday she has been reinstated — a move that follows the reinstatement of 14 Federal Emergency Management Agency employees who signed a critical letter of their own.
The employee, Jenna Norton, “was a key organizer of”Bethesda announcement,” Released in June 2025 and signed by nearly 500 NIH employees, it condemned the decline in medical research under Mr. Trump. The document sparked a wave of other public letters, including a Katrina manifesto signed by FEMA employees, which warned that the agency risked repeating the mistakes it made during the Hurricane Katrina disaster more than two decades earlier.
Dr. Norton, a program director at the National Institute for Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, was sent home with pay in November when she tried to return to work after a 43-day government shutdown. She later filed a whistle-blower complaint accusing her superiors of retaliating against her. She has emerged as a high-profile critic of the administration, speaking out on social media and in interviews.
This week, he said, he received a four-sentence email asking him to return to work on Monday, but it gave no reason for reinstatement. Health Secretary Robert F. A spokesman for Kennedy Jr., who oversees NIH, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Dr. Norton.
Dr. Norton specializes in research aimed at eliminating disparities in the incidence and treatment of kidney disease. But Mr. Trump issued an executive order on his first day in office eliminating government-sponsored “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs, leading to the cancellation of many of the grants he oversaw.
Some have been reinstated as a result of lawsuits. “I wish I could say I was excited to return to my job,” Dr. Norton said in an interview, “but I’m very concerned that that job doesn’t really exist anymore.”
When Dr. Norton was first placed on “nonessential administrative leave,” health department officials gave various reasons. One said he had been sent on leave because he criticized the administration when he was supposed to be working. NIH Director, Dr. Jai Bhattacharya told an online publication, just newsThat the Health Department was investigating Dr. Norton “for potentially violating the Anti-Deficiency Act,” which prevents federal employees from spending money more than limits set by Congress.
He also said that Dr. Norton may have violated the communications policy, and that he does not have “academic freedom” to speak because he is not a full-time research scientist.
That’s not true, says Debra S., the attorney representing Dr. Norton in the whistle-blower case. That is still pending, Katz said.
“His participation as a leader of Bethesda announcement is legal, First Amendment protected speech,” Ms. Katz said. “They went on a fishing expedition to find a reason to suspend and fire him, but there was no reason. So they have been left in a precarious position, and have been forced to withdraw him.”
