ADDRESSING THE CONFERENCE — U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., addresses the Focus Forward: Long Live West Virginia conference Tuesday morning at the Morgantown Marriott at Waterfront Place. -- Ben Conley/The Dominion Post

MORGANTOWN — You could call it the elephant in the room.

U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., addressed the annual Focus Forward conference in the Morgantown Marriott at Waterfront Place ballroom Tuesday morning.

And while much of her address centered around the chosen theme of the daylong event — healthy aging — Capito was clearly cognizant it was being delivered by a Republican in a city jolted in recent weeks by the CDC’s reduction of 185 research jobs at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and before a crowd with a vested interest in how changes to the National Institute of Health could mean millions in lost research dollars for West Virginia University.

“There’s a lot of angst out there right now,” Capito said. “Some people are very excited about the shrinking of government and the president doing what he said he was going to do, and all the different kinds of measures with the policies he’s put forward — an emphasis on energy and border patrol and all those kinds of things.

“And then there’s others who are very put out by a lot of that. Maybe not the border so much, but particularly the DOGE issues and some of the other issues that the president has gotten involved in. So, I’m getting both sides of the arguments here, and I like it. I like to hear. I have to hear, and I want to hear what’s on everybody’s minds,” she said.

Capito’s comments came hours after the senator’s office released a formal request to Robert Kennedy, Jr., the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, asking him to undo the reduction in force order impacting the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

The letter expresses Capito’s support for President Donald Trump’s efforts to “right size our government,” but says eliminating NIOSH’s coal programs and research will not help achieve that goal as those efforts are not duplicative of work being done elsewhere in government and will ultimately undermine vital health programs vital to many West Virginians.

“We have a movement, MAHA, make America Healthy Again, and we see Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., going a lot of directions — some directions that I think are causing some concerns,” Capito said Monday, noting more widespread support for some of Kennedy’s efforts in areas like food additives.

“I will say this about him. I was in a meeting earlier with the NIOSH folks. He’s very responsive on the phone. He is very quick to respond, and that’s the kind of leader I want. I would like him to do everything I want, but I do want you to know that we do have good lines of communication there,” she said.

Capito closed her remarks by addressing concerns that a move by the NIH to rein in indirect costs could end up pulling millions of dollars out of research — including an estimated $12 million from WVU, according to the university.

“I’m not going to stand to have research and innovation suffer. I don’t want to see things that we do in this country so well, that we do right here in this state in terms of health innovations, health cures, health research, health investigations for rural America — huge, huge cancer rates that we have here. I’m not going to stop and be a party to anything that reduces our ability to research and innovate like we do as a country. Because if we don’t, other countries will. And we should,” Capito said, expressing her belief that the frantic pace at which directives are coming out of Washington isn’t likely to slow down anytime soon.

“So, with that, I’ll say hang in there.”