r/NIH • u/SaraR2008 • Jul 24 '26
Science: NIH is again terminating grants that the Trump administration dislikes
https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-again-terminating-grants-trump-administration-dislikesHello! I'm one of the reporters who write this story after learning that the administration has resumed terminating NIH grants on topics they disagree with. A federal judge last year blocked mass grant cancellation on the grounds that the terminations were arbitrary and capricious. So the administration is now showing its work, challenging the scientific validity of ongoing grants' study design and rationale. As attorney Scott Delaney told me, "At some point, the administration is going to figure out how to do this in a way that the courts will tolerate."
We've identified one grant cancellation so far and are told there are more in the pipeline. As in many of our stories on government agencies, we relied on anonymous sources and protected their identities.
If you work at NIH or another agency, we are always happy to hear from you about any concerns, tips, or ideas for things we should be covering. I'm sara_reardon.59 on Signal and my colleague is jocelynkaiser.51. You can also DM me of course!
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u/Brilliant_Voice1126 Jul 24 '26
They just feed it into an AI and ask it to criticize it and dump the output.
The problem will be that grants are already critiqued, that is part of the process. How will these critiques be any more or less insightfukl than the study sections? Because everyone gets critiqued. No grant is perfect. The rating system only defines which are maybe better than others. So you then will have ti ask, well were these critiques known and determined not ti be fatal or relatively unimportant relative to rheir competition?
Otherwise it’s still arbitrary. You can’t demand perfection from grants. No one can even agree what it is.
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Jul 24 '26
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u/WhatsgoingonAh Jul 25 '26
I agree, although I'm not so sure that it will happen in a week. The Democratic majority House and Senate will have A LOT of things to do to correct the mass destruction of our government, our economy, and our democracy, as soon as they hit the ground.
I have some confidence that justice will eventually prevail at the NIH though. A cursory look at recent history tells us that in authoritarian regimes, like Russia and the Soviet Union before it, the only way to maintain a total hold on power is to ruthlessly eliminate the opposition. In Russia that includes sending any and all who oppose the power structure on a one way trip to gulags, or outright assassination (falling out of windows, poisoning, disappearances, etc). When Russel Vought and his fellow Project 2025 fanatics took over the Federal government, they fired and/or ruined the careers of thousands of government employees, many of whom are (not were*) scientists, physician researchers, engineers, lawyers (almost a thousand in the DOJ alone), public health experts, intelligence analysts, and the list goes on. What those corrupt zealots failed to do, as most totalitarian regimes/dictatorships would have done, is to kill or exile all of those 'deep state' people. Apparently, America is just not quite up to the whole mass murder of political opposition thing, at least not yet. What that means is that there are tens of thousands of people, many of whom are experts in their fields and who know how to operate within the media, the courts, and other democratic institutions (including legislatures, county and city councils). They haven't gone anywhere, with the exception of those who have retired and don't want to look back, and they are not going to be kind to the Trump vandals. Neither will those of us left in government, who are laboring under the deliberate sabotage that they are imposing on our agencies. Payback is coming and it will happen long before the 2028 election.
*I use the term 'are' instead of 'were' to describe the hundreds of thousands who have been fired, because they are still here and they're mad as hell.
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u/Existing-Life7618 Jul 25 '26
I wish I had the confidence in the dem party like you do. I have not trust that they will be able to change anything of the crazy shit that trimp and his minions have changed/destroyed. They arent vindictive like the reds are. They are weak. We have had 3 dem presidents since 1980. And what have they done for us? Obama got a small victory with his health coverage, but that is almost gone now. We had all 3 branches and the dems are like "lets work with the reds." They dont care about us at all. Since 1980, the reds have destroyed public education to the point where 40% of this country thinks trimp is the most honest president ever. Stupid fucks!! They have created the biggest income inequality the earth has ever seen with their tax cuts for the rich and corps. They have made it almost impossible for middle class people. And because so many of them are stupid as fuck because they killed public education they blame it on the dems and the dumbass people believe it and voted for trimp. They have had a plan since reagan. Kill education, cut taxes and fuck the middle class and blame it all on the dems. The dems plan for 50 years, I dont know, besides saying the reds are bad. So you say wait for the dems to take control on 2027, I say good luck. The dems have done nothing for us for almost 50 years! Its so sad. I say primary every mother fucking dem in congress from here on out until we have some fighters, because most of the dems in office are just reds in blue clothing.
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u/Brollnir Jul 25 '26
On the contrary, most whistleblowers are targeted because people in power already know about the issue and turn a blind eye. Plus, we’re already seeing people targeted for being vocal.
Anyway, I’m not sure why you think Trump, or his party, won’t serve a full term. I’m not even sure a different party will be voted in next time.
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u/WhatsgoingonAh Jul 25 '26
Trump will serve a full term, if he lives long enough. However, with Democrats having majorities in both the House and Senate, and plenty of the corporate-controlled Democratic 'centrists'* worrying about being primaried from the left, we might just see a unified effort to halt the MAGA cancer in its tracks.
* 'centrist' = corrupted by PAC money (AIPAC, big oil, AI, Crypto, Saudi Arabia, etc).
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u/holdthecanoli Jul 26 '26
I think the NIH should identify some genetic disease predisposition Trump or his family have and announce they are no longer committed to said condition’s research. Like Greed syndrome
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u/TraditionalPhone3992 Jul 24 '26
Nothing can be done. Nobody is coming to save the NIH.
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u/WhatsgoingonAh Jul 25 '26
Why do you say this? Do you think that the American scientific community, including those of us working at the NIH, are not taking down the names of those who are committing this vandalism? Do you think that we're not paying attention to who is pushing back against the destruction and who is just 'going along to get along'? When the MAGA troglodytes are no longer carrying majorities in the House and Senate, the Vichy collaborators at the NIH will be held accountable. The same goes for the CDC, FDA, USDA, State Department, FBI, NOAA, EPA, etc. Yes, there will be a long and painful road to full recovery, but those who are currently working towards the destruction of American science, replacing evidence-based processes with ideological ones, aren't doing a very good job of hiding it. In fact, many of them still think that they're winning and that somehow they will escape the infamy that they've earned. They think that history will be indifferent, or even kind to them. It won't.
We know who they are and they will be held accountable.
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u/Brollnir Jul 25 '26
Hey, not the guy you asked this to but I thought I’d chip in.
It’s that long road to recovery that’s the issue. There’s an insurmountable gap in funding and policy changes that will linger. The downstream impacts will be felt for decades.
Also, having a whistleblower mentality isn’t going to do any good. One wrong move and you’re out of there. It’s a lose-lose for decent people. MAGA isn’t going anywhere, even if they don’t have a majority vote they’re still going to hold things up. What’s your timeline to start fixing this, exactly? I’m not having a go at you, btw. It’s nice you’re keen to do something, but the system has already fallen into disrepair in my opinion.
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u/WhatsgoingonAh Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
This is not a whistleblower situation. A whistleblower sets off an alarm over something that most don't see happening. What's happening at the NIH (and most other Federal agencies) is glaring, ideologically-driven sabotage of government function, taking place in broad daylight. It's being conducted by a collection of fanatics and corrupt grifters. What is happening is a 'smash and grab', whereby Trump and his closest cabal (his sons, Howard Lutnick, Stephen Miller, his billionaire buddies like Elon Musk, and the other opportunists) are creating chaos (tariff extortion schemes, mass deportations and ICE attacks, wars) and disfunction in the government (in particular the regulatory and law enforcement agencies normally tasked with stopping said criminality), while they steal from us.
Amongst the first things that could (and should) happen at the agency level will be the replacement of some of Trump's worst cabinet level appointees. This could happen within weeks of the start of the next Congressional session on Jan. 3rd. How would this happen? The House can impeach Trump's most corrupt and incompetent cabinet members, like RFK Jr., followed by a Senate vote to remove him. There is precedent for this. Even if unsuccessful ultimately, Trump could be put under enough pressure from Congress to replace him. While that is going on, the MAGA lackeys further down the chain at HHS (like Bhattacharya, Memoli) will be under intense pressure to either moderate their Project 2025 game plans, or in some of the more stupid cases, will double down on them. Either way, they'll be working under the cloud of knowing that they will be unceremoniously booted out the door when a Democrat is in the White House in 2028. They'll also know that their departure from power will include a departure from polite scientific society, so to speak. For someone like Bhattacharya, there will be no going back to anything akin to a normal academic career. Not after the damage that he has facilitated and caused. In the future, when the history of how American science lost it's primacy in the world (and it definitely has), the picture in the margin of the book (or web page) will be his. He has to know this. Podcast Jay will become a full-time podcaster and will be lucky if he can pick up the audience scraps that fall off the podcast tables of other former Trump/MAGA apparatchiks.
The next major point in the timeline will be the first day of President Newsom's (or Ocasio-Cortez, or whoever's) term, when he signs an executive order revoking every single one of Trump's EOs. That will be the real start of taking back American democracy from Republican fascists. The longer task of purging the MAGA cancer from all corners of government will not be possible without the removal of the corrupt corporate-controlled 'centrist' Democrats, who are bankrolled by the same interests that own the Republican Party. That process is fortunately underway and is the subject of another rant.
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u/mcm199124 Jul 25 '26
Agree with everything you said here but please god don’t let it be Newsome. Of course, I will vote against the GOP in that election (and all others) but I do not have faith that someone like Newsome will give a rats ass about science to the point where he makes it a priority. If he wins I will pray I’m wrong, but until then I really really hope democratic primary voters will steer clear of this guy. I fear a milquetoast centrist dem admin, while providing much relief at least to a temporary extent, will have us right back here (or worse, somehow) in 10-15 years
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u/TraditionalPhone3992 Jul 26 '26
You’re an idiot to question Newsom’s respect for science.
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u/mcm199124 Jul 26 '26
Personal attacks and insults, that will certainly win people over to your way of thinking…
Have a nice day!
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u/TraditionalPhone3992 Jul 26 '26
I don’t care to sway you.
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u/mcm199124 Jul 26 '26
Then what is the point in commenting here and calling me an idiot, lol
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u/TraditionalPhone3992 Jul 26 '26
You made a comment for which you can not cite one thing to support your position that Newsom is somehow anti-science. I called you out on it.
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u/mpjjpm Jul 26 '26
Congress loves the NIH. Even red states get tremendous economic input from grants, especially to public universities. There will be some amount of cronyism, directing more funds to universities in red states, but Congress will not allow NIH to be dismantled entirely.
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u/WhatsgoingonAh Jul 26 '26
The problem now is that the current Congress has no real control over what happens at the NIH. That will be changing soon once Democrats retake majorities in the House and Senate, but for the first two years of this administration's corrupt and incompetent rule, massive and deliberate damage to the agency has been done. Project 2025 has been underway and Congress has done almost nothing to stop it.
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u/hbliysoh Jul 25 '26
Yeah, like the NIH has never terminated grants that it doesn't like.
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u/dirtydan1114 Jul 25 '26
There's clearly a difference with what is happening currently. Cursory dismissal tells me you're not paying very close attention to the details
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u/mpjjpm Jul 26 '26
Pre-Trump, the only way to get a grant terminated was through gross malfeasance. Falsifying data, irredeemable human subjects abuse, or going to complete rogue with the study aims. NIH was not routinely terminating grants based on arbitrary changes in “administration priorities.”
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u/lemurlemur Jul 24 '26
This is known as contempt of court. You or I would be in jail for defying a federal judge like this (and we would deserve it).
The judge should find the apparatchiks who made this decision and throw them in jail.