A National Institutes of Health employee who was put on paid leave after organizing a public letter that criticized the Trump administration said on Friday that she had been reinstated — a move that followed the reinstatement of 14 Federal Emergency Management Agency employees who had signed a critical letter of their own.
The employee, Jenna Norton, was a key organizer of “The Bethesda Declaration,” issued in June 2025 and signed by nearly 500 N.I.H. employees, which deplored the degradation of medical research under Mr. Trump. The document spawned a wave of other public letters, including one known as the Katrina Declaration, signed by the FEMA employees, which warned that the agency risked repeating mistakes it had made during the Hurricane Katrina disaster more than two decades ago.
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 subsequently 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, she received a four-sentence email telling her to return to work on Monday, she said, but it gave no reason for the reinstatement. A spokesman for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who oversees the N.I.H., 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 an executive order Mr. Trump issued on his first day in office, ending government-sponsored “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs, led to the cancellation of many of the grants she 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 worried that that job doesn’t really exist anymore.”
When Dr. Norton was first placed on “nondisciplinary administrative leave,” health department officials gave various reasons. One said she had been put on leave because she had criticized the administration when she was supposed to be working. The N.I.H. director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, told an online publication, Just the News, that the health department was investigating Dr. Norton “for potentially violating the Antideficiency Act,” which bars federal employees from spending money beyond what Congress appropriates.
He also said that Dr. Norton might have violated communications policy, and that she did not have the “academic freedom” to speak out because she is not a full-time research scientist.
That is not true, said Debra S. Katz, the lawyer representing Dr. Norton in her whistle-blower case, which is still pending.
“Her participation as leader of the Bethesda Declaration is legal, First Amendment protected speech,” Ms. Katz said. “They went on a fishing expedition to try to find a reason to suspend and fire her, and there was none. So they have been left with an indefensible position, and forced to take her back.”
