BREAKING: A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to restore millions of dollars in canceled grants to University of California researchers, calling the terminations flagrantly illegal and unconstitutional. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

From the Tennessean: "About 500 are being let go in June, due in part to federal cuts to indirect costs previously covered through research grants from the NIH" As we wrote in Nat Hum Behav: "NIH IDC cuts will impact the economy and employment". rdcu.be/eo3Hp www.tennessean.com/story/news/h...

In an email to staff, NIH deputy director Matt Memoli says: "It has come to our attention that some staff are giving guidance... that the word 'diversity' may not be used in any context." "Obviously this is bad guidance... Please ask your staff to use common sense when implementing NIH priorities."

An NIH staffer reacts to today's ruling: "I'm looking forward to the day that we are so slammed with work trying to reinstate everything that we had to terminate illegally — I'll work 24/7 to make that happen if I can."

📢BREAKING: Just left the courthouse for our NIH grant termination case Judge ruled terminations are “VOID & ILLEGAL” As a plaintiff, I felt a wave of relief & hope; he acknowledged the discrimination & harm Closed by asking, ‘Have we fallen so low? Have we no shame?’

After ruling the NIH grant terminations illegal, Judge Young ended the hearing with an eye-opening speech. “This represents racial discrimination, and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community. That's what this is. I would be blind not to call it out. My duty is to call it out. And I do so.”

THIS IS IT! THIS IS HUGE!! PLAINTIFF'S WIN!! Judge Young rules that the NIH grant terminations at issue in these cases are illegal and therefore vacated. BOOM!

After ruling, with anger in his voice, Judge Young: "This represents racial discrimination. And discrimination against America's LGBTQ community. That's what this is. I would be blind not to call it out. My duty is to call it out. And I do so."

In a swift response to this morning's hearing, District Court Judge William G. Young has just ruled that the directives that led to 100s of grant terminations at the NIH are arbitrary and capricious. The directives + subsequent terminations are illegal, he said. "They are of no force and effect."

⚖️ HUGE day today in the NIH terminations cases There's a trial (of sorts) at 10a ET in Boston today for arguments that NIH unlawfully terminated 100s of grants. It's a 3 hour hearing and I'll post periodic updates. Of note: this is the 1st lawsuit filed against the Trump Admin to go to trial.

To add to this, I've had the chance to look at abstracts from year to year and see where some have changed. Whether by force or fear of reprisal, there are instances where even the mention of health disparities have been removed or altered. We can't solve problems if we can't talk about them.

Dr. Bhattacharya's first line of his Monday PM response to The Bethesda Declaration was "We all want NIH to succeed". Like the OSTP Director, the rhetorical 'we' implies that HHS leadership are engaged in good-faith negotiations with the best interests of America's health in mind. (they aren't)

Bhattacharya responds to the Bethesda Declaration, saying, "We are reviewing each termination case carefully..." As I reported last month, DOGE sent a spreadsheet of projects and demanded that NIH staff terminate them without any scientific review.

NIH director Jay Bhattacharya's response to the letter hundreds of agency employees sent him: "The Bethesda Declaration has some fundamental misconceptions about the policy directions the NIH has taken in recent months, including the continuing support of the NIH for international collaboration...

More complete analysis of NIH outlays (or lack thereof) from grant-watch.us grant-watch.us/posts/trends...

Very smart, high ROI initiative from the Spencer Foundation. Providing bridge funding for canceled NSF grants: 1) directs funds to projects already screened by a top-noch review process. 2) avoids imposing proposal prep costs on researchers. 3) ameliorates the disruption from GOP sabotage.

BREAKING: Trump has banned all foreign-national Harvard students and researchers from entering the US on student or foreign exchange visas. Shifts legal fight from one over State and DHS powers to presidential powers

BREAKING: Judge Boasberg GRANTS class certification for the people held at CECOT and gives the government ONE WEEK to explain how they're going to facilitate due process for EVERYONE sent there under the Alien Enemies Act. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

“The Trump administration has moved to end funding for a broad swath of HIV vaccine research, saying current approaches are enough to counter the virus, several scientists and federal health officials say.” OBVIOUSLY CURRENT APPROACHES ARE NOT ENOUGH, hence the research!🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

DOGE is now reviewing every NIH grant that goes out, I reported last week. That review is AI-driven and is screening for DEI, trans health, China, vaccine hesitancy, and the institutions to whom Trump has blocked funding, @hannahnatanson.bsky.social reports. Gift link: wapo.st/3HhnPSt

The newest budget numbers out of NSF are... not good. We're looking at worse than worst case scenarios for U.S. research universities. That's in addition to all the other attacks. Every person w/ a word processer and an hour of time should be penning an op-ed to their local papers this weekend.

Meanwhile (as federal funding to science acts a rug pulled out from under the research universities), some states pile on to undermine the independence of their state universities.

@advancejournal.bsky.social is publishing a blog series about the impacts of terminations of NSF grants focused on equity. www.advancejournal.org/post/3230-pa...

Absolutely devastating and affecting a lot of my colleagues here at @scripps.edu who dedicated their whole careers to coming up with a vaccine for HIV. Which, btw, outside HIV, has led to a whole field of much better vaccines and vaccine platforms.

To put these top-line budget numbers in context, cuts of this magnitude would effectively mean no new grants in FY2026. The entire extramural budget would go to existing, continuing grants. An abject failure of American ambition. And a betrayal of our global leadership in health science innovation.

NIH funding supporting the HMMER and Infernal software projects has been terminated. NIH states that our work, as well as all other federally funded research at Harvard, is of no benefit to the US.

$9.5 billion of biomedical research support, 2,100 grants, have already been terminated at NIH www.statnews.com/2025/05/27/n...

Perhaps relevant as scientists weather a range of attacks, our team (led by UW research scientist Rachel Moran) published a paper describing how a slew of public records requests impacted our work & what that means for collaborative research in adversarial spaces & times: dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

A sizeable number of NIH grants are going multiple months without a new funding period arriving in RePORTER. The Grant Watch team has begun to track these overdue grants in an effort to shed further light on our broken system. grant-watch.us/posts/tracki... 1/5

All of NIH funding to Northwestern University is frozen. This pause includes noncompeting approved funding, new and competing grants with fundable scores. No reimbursements for money already spent have been received since March. This situation is rarely reported so please Please get the word out!

Shit.

TRO granted: NYT: “[A] federal judge in Boston moved swiftly to block implementation of the federal government’s order.” www.nytimes.com/2025/05/23/u...

All NSF GRFPs to students choosing to attend Harvard in the Fall were just terminated

More details on what's happening to NIH grants right now: www.chronicle.com/article/an-n...

SCOOP: HIV scientists were given a choice by the National Institutes of Health: Eliminate a study of transgender youth, or lose a shot to recover larger grants that had been terminated. They chose the former. www.chronicle.com/article/an-n...

Moderna is delaying its application for a BLA for mRNA-1083 (a combined seasonal flu and next-generational COVID-19 vaccine) to get more efficacy data per FDA's demands: investors.modernatx.com/news/news-de...

Makary and Prasad have a sounding board piece written in NEJM about the future of COVID-19 vaccine regulation at the FDA. Some thoughts:

🚨 Over 700 previously undisclosed #NIH grant terminations were released this week, totaling $1.7B and nearly doubling our count of terminations to >1500. Diversity supplements for research awards are a huge fraction, as well as service awards and training programs. grant-watch.us/posts/700-ne...

The District Court of R.I. has ordered a preliminary injuction against the termination of $11 Billion in COVID-19 funding. An earlier TRO in this case resulted in 60-70 NIH grants being reinstated as well as numerous CDC grants. www.courtlistener.com/docket/69829...

All NIH and NSF grants for my entire team--and for all of Harvard, I guess?--have been terminated. As provocative as that sounds, the practical effect is probably not much. Everything was already frozen. 🤷‍♂️ On the upside, it makes tracking terminated grants easier. No more guesswork at Harvard!

Yesterday, the NIH R35 “Outstanding Investigator” grant to fund scientists in my lab studying antibiotic resistance was terminated for reasons not related to the content of the science, or any actions taken by me or members of my lab

This is a different (though related) issue. I’m trying to argue that when we … as scientists and universities … craft our advocacy, we need to include projects and societal value from the areas the Trump regime wants to convince people are the “bad science.”

Somewhat oddly, the Trump regime's initial moves to cut science funding went very broad. This is catalyzing solidarity & advocacy around the value of science (see comms featuring cancer cures & tech innovation). But their next move may be to try to drive a wedge b/w "good science" & "bad science".

@noamross.net, @scott-delaney.bsky.social and @anthonybarente.bsky.social are doing crucial work tracking NIH grants that are disappearing, and in some cases coming back. check it out 👇

We just pushed some updates to Grant Watch. Most importantly: tracking of reinstated #NIH grants. With close tracking of litigation and snapshots from @archive.org , we're identifying the grants NIH appears to be quietly removing from their termination lists. Details: grant-watch.us/posts/update...

⚖️ Terminated NIH grant litigation update: There's a hearing on a motion for preliminary injunction today at 11:30a EDT in Mass. v RFK et al, a case brought by some states against HHS. This is 1 of 2 diff. cases on this topic. I'll be live-tweeting it later this morning. Check back on this thread.

ATTENTION New crowdsourced site collecting and sharing stories of public impact of research publicusaresearchbenefits.com Take a look and consider contributing. Let's make this as powerful as possible!

Fabulous deep dive into court filings from last week and DOGE's actions at the NIH. The good news is that several of these grants were reinstated. But there is still a long way to go. Link to my thread on reinstatements: bsky.app/profile/anth...

Harvard will no longer receive ANY federal research money, per letter to the school: "Harvard should no longer seek GRANTS from the federal government, since none will be provided. Harvard will cease to be a publicly funded institution, and can instead operate as a privately-funded institution."

I just think it is very important for NIH watchers to be very, very clear about what the individual ICs are not permitted to do, versus what they are *choosing* to do in response to the chaos of FY2025 extramural grant awards.