Banning NIH Grant Meetings, Trump Circumvents Courts That Blocked Funding Freeze

The Trump administration's attempt to freeze all federal grants, including those at the National Institutes of Health, has been temporarily blocked since late last month, when two federal judges ruled that President Donald Trump did not have the authority to pull back the funding—but new reporting on Friday detailed how the administration has circumvented the rulings, threatening critical funding for biomedical research.

As The New York Times reported, the Trump administration has issued an order "forbidding health officials from giving public notice of upcoming grant review meetings," blocking "an obscure but necessary cog in the grant-making machinery that delivers some $47 billion annually to research on Alzheimer's, heart disease, and other ailments."

Notices are required before any federal meetings can be held, and the order led to the cancellation of 42 out of 47 previously-scheduled NIH grant application meetings this week, impacting research that would have studied pancreatic cancer, addiction, brain injuries, and children's health, among other subjects.

Without public notices being posted in the Federal Register by the NIH, about 16,000 grant applications asking for $1.5 billion in research funding have already been stalled, reported NPR.

"Applications will come in and basically they go into a black hole and nothing can be done with them," one person who remained anonymous told NPR. "That is where we are now."

The Times reported that an email from an NIH official on February 7 stated that the order blocking public notices "came from the HHS level," referring to the Department of Health and Human Services. The ban was in effect "indefinitely," said the official.

"Applications will come in and basically they go into a black hole and nothing can be done with them. That is where we are now."

"People in every community have to understand what gutting NIH funding means," said U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) on Saturday. "The cures unlocked by NIH-funded researchers might one day save your life—but because of Trump and [Department of Government Efficiency head Elon] Musk, now they might never be discovered at all."

Many health researchers and others who rely on federal grants breathed a sigh of relief when Trump's funding freeze was blocked by the judicial system late last month, and Judge Angel Kelley of the Federal District Court for the District of Massachusetts on Friday extended a separate order that aimed to cut about $4 billion in grants that it provides for "indirect costs" such as lab equipment and facilities maintenance.

Regarding Trump's broader federal funding freeze, U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island heard arguments in the case on Friday, and said he hopes to issue a final ruling in about a week following his temporary restraining order last month.

But unless it is lifted, the HHS order blocking grant review meetings will likely lead to "missing" discoveries, researchers told The Washington Post on Saturday.

Without the ability to secure grant funding, research organizations are preparing to lay off researchers and accept fewer students to work in their laboratories, the Post reported.

"The discoveries that aren't made—you can't point to them, because they will never be made," Jeremy Berg, former director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, told the Post. "The hard part is you don't know what you missed until years later, when something doesn't happen."