States are suing the National Institutes of Health over ending life-saving medical research grants that Trump officials say were “DEI studies.”
Judge blocks Trump cuts to medical research funding
A judge has ordered the Trump administration to unfreeze funding for medical research grants.
Fox – 5 Atlanta
WASHINGTON − Democratic attorneys general in 16 states led by New York sued the Trump administration Friday over its cancelation of National Institutes of Health research grants the group called critical for life-saving medical research.
The NIH began terminating tens of millions of grants in March based on President Donald Trump’s orders to abolish diversity, equity and inclusion programs, according to the federal lawsuit filed in Massachusetts. Letters terminating grants said they targeted “DEI,” “transgender issues,” or “vaccine hesitancy,” the lawsuit said.
“Once again, the Trump administration is putting politics before public health and risking lives and livelihoods in the process,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. “Millions of Americans depend on our nation’s research institutions for treatments and cures to the diseases that devastate families every day.”
The case was filed the same week the Department of Health and Human Services laid off 10,000 more workers as part of a move to cut nearly one-fourth of its staff to reduce government spending.
The lawsuit from the states asks the courts to restore the grant funding and ensure the government uses lawful procedures in determining funding. The Association of American Medical Colleges and the American Public Health Association each sued NIH in February over terminating research grants, and a group of 22 states previously sued NIH over capping the overhead on research.
Canceled grants funded research into Alzheimer’s, substance abuse, HIV
In New York, NIH has terminated more than $4.5 million in research grants for the State University of New York. The cancelled grants include projects on Alzheimer’s disease in Asian and Latino Americans, substance abuse risks for LGBTQ+ youth and HIV treatment in Ghana.
In termination letters, NIH arbitrarily claimed these were “DEI studies” and stated that the projects were “incompatible with agency priorities, and no modification of the project could align the project with agency priorities,” the suit said.
Critical medical research ‘in jeopardy’: lawsuit
The NIH is the largest public funder of medical research in the world and is responsible for life-saving vaccines that have eradicated several diseases, biomedical discoveries that have reduced the risk of certain cancers, and life-extending treatments for illnesses that were previously a death sentence, like HIV and AIDS.
NIH’s $37 billion in awards last year spurred more than $94 billion in new economic activity, according to the lawsuit, and the investments supported more than 400,000 jobs nationwide.
“That critical work is now in jeopardy,” the lawsuit said.
Trump ordered end to DEI programs on first day back in office
Trump signed an executive order on his first day back in office Jan. 20 to end DEI programs across the government.
“Americans deserve a government committed to serving every person with equal dignity and respect, and to expending precious taxpayer resources only on making America great,” Trump’s order said.
The lawsuit suit names Robert Kennedy, the secretary of Health and Human Services, and a number of NIH agencies as defendants such as the National Cancer Institute, National Eye Institute and National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
In letters terminating grant funding, NIH said projects were “DEI studies” that were “incompatible with agency priorities, and no modification of the project could align the project with agency priorities.” But the letters provided no factual basis for these claims nor any insight on new agency priorities, according to the lawsuit.
Besides shutting down research indefinitely, delays in NIH funding postponed future studies and forced researchers to abandon projects and lose key personnel, according to the lawsuit.
Besides New York, the state attorneys general who brought the lawsuit are from Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawai’i, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin.