Joshua Roberts/Reuters
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said on Thursday that he was given assurances from a top health official with the Trump administration that they feel free to spend federal funds conducting gun-violence related research. Whether they go out and actually do so remains uncertain. The New York Democrat met earlier in the morning with Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, during which he pressed him to begin such research. A month prior, Congress had voted to end a controversial prohibition on federally undertaken gun-violence research and Schumer’s ask was that the CDC begin taking advantage of the loosened restrictions. According to a statement from the Senator, the meeting with Redfield was “very encouraging,” though it’s not clear if concrete promises were made. The new CDC director, Schumer said “agreed there is no longer a prohibition on the CDC conducting research on the gun-violence epidemic. That is a good first step but we have a lot of work to do to ensure the CDC initiates this extremely important research in the near future. I hope that the CDC will use some of their newly increased resources from the omnibus spending package to get this done.”