funding

Report: US scientists lost $3 billion in NIH grants since Trump took office

cures, funding, grants, health, NIH, research, Science / Mike M. / March 29, 2025

Since Trump took office on January 20, research funding from the National Institutes of Health has plummeted by more than $3 billion compared with the pace of funding in 2024, according to an analysis by The Washington Post.

By this time in March 2024, the NIH had awarded US researchers a total of $1.027 billion for new grants or competitive grant renewals. This year, the figure currently stands at about $400 million. Likewise, funding for renewals of existing grants without competition reached $4.5 billion by this time last year, but has only hit $2 billion this year. Together, this slowdown amounts to a 60 percent drop in grant support for a wide variety of research—from studies on cancer treatments, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, vaccines, mental health, transgender health, and more.

The NIH is the primary source of funding for biomedical research in the US. NIH grants support more than 300,000 scientists at more than 2,500 universities, medical schools, and other research organizations across all 50 states.

In the near term, the missing grant money means clinical trials have been abruptly halted, scientific projects are being shelved, supplies can’t be purchased, and experiments can’t be run. But, in the long run, it means a delay in scientific advancements and treatment, which could echo across future generations. With funding in question, academic researchers may be unable to retain staff or train younger scientists.

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“This will be a painful period”: RFK Jr. slashes 24% of US health dept.

CDC, fda, funding, health, HHS, NIH, reductions, research, robert f kennedy jr, Science, trump administration / Mike M. / March 28, 2025

Health Secretary and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is slashing a total of 20,000 jobs across the Department of Health and Human Services—or about 24 percent of the workforce—in a sweeping overhaul said to improve efficiency and save money, Kennedy and the HHS announced Thursday.

Combining workforce losses from early retirement, the “Fork in the Road” deferred resignation deal, and 10,000 positions axed in the reductions and restructuring announced today, HHS will shrink from 82,000 full-time employees to 62,000 under Kennedy and the Trump administration. The HHS’s 28 divisions will be cut down to 15, while five of the department’s 10 regional offices will close.

“This will be a painful period,” Kennedy said in a video announcement posted on social media. Calling the HHS a “sprawling bureaucracy,” Kennedy claimed that the cuts would be aimed at “excess administrators.”

“I want to promise you now that we are going to do more with less,” he said in the video.

Kennedy and HHS said the cuts will save $1.8 billion each year. That’s about 0.027 percent of total federal spending, based on the $6.75 trillion the government spent in 2024, and about 0.06 percent of the $2.8 trillion HHS budget for that year.

The downsizing announced today includes significant cuts to the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health.

Cuts upon cuts

The FDA will lose 3,500 employees, which The Wall Street Journal reported was about 19 percent of its staff. HHS did not provide current staff levels at the agency level or percentage cuts. The CDC, which will absorb the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), will lose 2,400 employees (1,400 from CDC and 1,000 from ASPR). The Journal reported that to be about 18 percent of the total workforce. NIH will lose 1,200 employees, about 6 percent of its workers.

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UMass disbands its entering biomed graduate class over Trump funding chaos

biomedical, funding, graduate programs, grants, health, NIH, research, Trump / Rejus Almole / March 14, 2025

Many schools are now bracing for steep declines in support. At Duke University, administrators have implemented hiring freezes, scaled back research plans, and will cut the number of admitted biomedical PhD students by 23 percent or more, according to reporting by the Associated Press. The school took in $580 million in grants and contracts from the National Institutes of Health last year.

At Vanderbilt University, faculty were sent an email on February 6 instructing them to reduce graduate admissions by half across the board, according to Stat. The outlet also reported that faculty at the University of Washington’s School of Public Health have reduced admissions.

Faculty at the University of Pennsylvania also reported having to rescind admission offers to applicants and were directed to significantly reduce admission rates, according to The Daily Pennsylvanian. The University of Wisconsin-Madison, too, is shrinking its graduate programs, according to the WKOW.com.

Beth Sullivan, who oversees graduate programs at Duke, told the AP that the shrinking classes mean a shrinking pipeline into America’s medical research community, which dominates the world’s health research fields and is a significant force in the country’s economy. “Our next generation of researchers are now poised on the edge of this cliff, not knowing if there’s going to be a bridge that’s going to get them to the other side, or if this is it,” Sullivan said.

“This is a severe blow to science and the training of the next generation of scientists,” Siyuan Wang, a geneticist and cell biologist at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, told Nature. “With fewer scientists, there will be less science and innovation that drive societal progress and the improvement of public health.”

This post was updated to correct Rachael Sirianni’s job title.

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