This is CBS I on the World.

I'm John Bachelors.

It's a great pleasure to welcome my colleague, Professor Richard Epstein, of the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas.

He teaches law at NYU and the University of Chicago.

His most recent post, let the National Institutes of Health delegate medical research to

private foundations. The driving issue here is the Doge Boys, the Trump administration, and seeking

to, in some fashion, make government efficient. The National Institute of Health is much admired.

It now passes into the hands of someone Richard admires. So this isn't about contest. This is about

what is to be done. Richard, a very good evening to you. As I understand it, there are outstanding

grants from the NIH,

and there's confusion as to whether they can be followed through since the executive order came

to halt funding of recipients. And you've written of this matter. It sounds like it's for the courts. Is that

where it's headed? Good evening to you, Richard. Well, I think half of it's for the course and

half of it's for politics. The part that is really going to head to the court is there are

grants that were made for an annual basis, something they have not expired yet. And what the

administration said is,

going forward with respect to existing grants, we're going to cut you back to the 15%. No notice and no

hearing. And it turns out they were committed to do this by contract on the short term grant.

And so the question is, can you say, I'm not in breach of the contract

if I just don't perform the rest of it, given that I performed it thus far? All they claim to do is to say,

we have the appality to basically disaffirm our own contract. And you can't disaffirm your own

contract. So my view is, at least in the short one, they're in the wrong on that. There should be some

...