OPINION — Right now, the Trump administration and Congress have an opportunity to seize on an issue that the last two Democratic administrations did not, and as we head into the 2026 midterm election cycle the political incentive couldn’t be stronger.
In 2011, a woman named Courtney Miller stood up at a Barack Obama town hall in Reno, Nevada, and asked the president why the federal government was essentially ignoring her husband — and millions of other Americans — living with a devastating disease called Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Obama promised to ask the National Institutes of Health to do more. Advocates celebrated. It felt like a turning point.
That promise quickly disintegrated.
