Anthony Barente

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...

Vanderbilt University Medical Center announces up to 650 layoffs due to fed funding cuts Vanderbilt University Medical Center announces up to 650 layoffs after federal cuts, including to research grants.

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...

Since about April, some larger terminated grants (P30 and U19) have left the TAGGS termination PDF. Presumably, those will start to be able to draw funds, correct?

Subject: From the NIH Principal Deputy Director: Guidance relating to NIH Priorities Colleagues, It has come to our attention that some staff are giving guidance to various employees that the word "diversity" may not be used in any context, and that anything with the word "diversity" in it is not allowed. This is not true. For example, an employee was told they could not go to a conference to discuss research on "neurodiverse individuals." Others are being told not to use the phrase "genetic diversity." Obviously, this is bad guidance. There are clearly many appropriate uses of the word diversity, and in no way does the NIH police speech or ban

Please ask your staff to use common sense when implementing NIH priorities or ensuring compliance with executive orders. If they are not sure about something, they should ask up their chain of command to get an answer. For NIH to continue its important mission, all staff must work collaboratively to promote rigorous science that does not discriminate and that will lead to potential breakthroughs for the health of all Americans. Please share this information with other leadership across your ICOs as appropriate. Matt

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 on twitter June 9: "We all want NIH to succeed and I believe that dissent in science is productive. However, the Bethesda Declaration has some fundamental misconceptions about the policy directions NIH has taken in recent months. 🧵1/5"

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)

God I love that website

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...

Rapid Response Bridge Funding Program In the face of recent abrupt shifts in federal funding for education research, including large-scale terminations of National Science Foundation (NSF) research grant awards, we have developed a rap...

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...

Trump administration ending multiple HIV vaccine studies, scientists and officials say "This is a setback of probably a decade for HIV vaccine research," one scientist said.

“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.

A Harvard scientist built a database of 2,100 NIH grant terminations. Then his own funding was cut Harvard's Scott Delaney helped build a database of NIH grant terminations that is being used in litigation against the Trump administration.

$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...