Umair
California, Massachusetts and 14 other states sued the Trump administration on Friday for withholding grant funding from public health and medical research institutions, cuts that have forced universities to curtail research and to delay the hiring of new staff.
The National Institutes of Health is the world’s leading public funder of biomedical research, supporting studies on aging, substance abuse and other major issues. More than 80 percent of the agency’s $47 billion budget goes to outside researchers — grant funding that in recent weeks has been eliminated, paused or delayed by the Trump administration in a “concerted, and multi-pronged effort to disrupt NIH’s grants,” according to the lawsuit.
Cuts and delays to N.I.H. funding have crippled research teams in universities across the country and halted studies midstream, setting back work on diseases like cancer and diabetes and plunging American medical research into crisis. The attorneys general are asking the courts to restore pulled grant funding and to allow pending grant applications to be evaluated and approved fairly.
“In their unlawful withholding and terminating of medical and public health research grants, the Trump Administration is upending not only the critical work being done today, but the promise of progress for future generations,” Rob Bonta, the attorney general of California, said in a statement.
Neither the National Institutes of Health nor the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the agency, responded to requests for comment.
The massive University of California system — which conducts nearly 9 percent of all U.S. academic research, through both its undergraduate campuses and academic medical centers — gets half of its funding from the federal government. The university system last fiscal year received $2 billion in N.I.H. contracts and grants, according to the lawsuit.
In recent days, some projects that had been reviewed by agency experts and appeared on the verge of receiving funding have been stalled by procedural delays. Experts have described those delays as an attempt by the Trump administration to circumvent court orders requiring the White House to unfreeze federal spending.
In addition, the Trump administration has terminated research grants on topics it finds objectionable, including the health of racial minorities and L.G.B.T.Q. communities. Such terminations are highly unusual, and are typically reserved for situations involving scientific misconduct or fraud.
The cancellations have left scientists without money for experiments that are already underway, including clinical trials involving volunteer participants. In some cases, researchers who have spent millions of dollars on now-cancelled studies cannot publish any results, wasting whatever funding had already been allocated.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups also sued this week to challenge the cancellation of N.I.H. funding. They argued that research was being eliminated without clear guidance or justification.
“Ending these N.I.H. grants wastes taxpayer money and years of hard work to answer the world’s most pressing biomedical questions,” said Brittany Charlton, an associate professor at Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health and a plaintiff in the A.C.L.U. lawsuit. “This is an attack on scientific progress itself.”
Those opposed to the cuts also argue they will hurt the economy. The $36 billion in funds awarded by the N.I.H. last year spurred more than $94 billion in new economic activity and supported more than 407,000 jobs across the country, according to the lawsuit.
