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First on FOX: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has cancelled funding projects (over $350 million in research grants for projects related to diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) and gender ideology), according to department officials.
The cuts included thrashing projects that studied “multi-level and multidimensional structural racism,” “gender-affirming hormone therapy in mice,” and “microattack.”
In total, there were over 500 research grants related to DEIs and progressive gender ideology that had ended their administration.
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“HHS is taking action to terminate more than $350 million in research funding that does not align with NIH and HHS priorities,” HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said in a statement. “Dismissed research grants are wasteful in studying things that don’t involve American health, including DEIs and gender ideologies. As we start to make America healthy again, it’s important to prioritize research that directly affects American health.”
The National Institutes of Health has announced a $9 billion cut in spending in response to a new mission from the Trump administration. (Aramie/Getty Images)
One of the grants included approximately $1 million for a research project entitled “Assessing the Cross-Multilevel and Multidimensional Structural Racism of the U.S. English-Spanish-Speaking Population in the US.” The project included the work of creating “intersecting, multilevel, and multidimensional structural racism measures” to “eliminate health disparities and discrimination” among racial minorities.
“Emergency public health is needed to gather valid and reliable data on structural racism before designing effective interventions to reduce structural racism,” the project’s description states.
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Several projects studying transgender medicine in mice were also among those cuts. One of these grants provides nearly $1 million to researchers at Emory University, studying how transgender hormone therapy affects skeletal maturation in mice, entitled “Microbiome-mediated Effects in Affirming Hormonal Therapy in Mouse.” Another project worth around $50,000 worked to understand how “administering chromosomal structure and cross-sex hormones” affects wound healing in mice.
Another research project that did not use mice earned nearly $1 million “to study the potential genome-relatedness with gender identity.”
HHS has concluded over 500 research grants with more than $350 million in grant funding for gender ideology and DEI research projects. (Getty Images/Fox News)
Grants focused on recruiting scientists based on the race and ethnicity of scientists have also been cut by the Trump administration. Valued over $5 million for researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, it has helped “achieve more racial and ethnic diversity among our departments of science and research,” including its commitment to hire at least 18 tenuretrack faculty members from minority racial and ethnic groups.”
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Shortly after President Donald Trump took office, he instructed federal agencies, including HHS, to temporarily freeze the issuance of new federal grants. The action was to ensure that the funding of each institution was compliant with Trump’s new policies and requirements, including removing public sector DEIs and progressive gender ideologies.
The judge then issued an order temporarily blocking the administration’s funding freeze, and shortly thereafter, the Trump administration retracted a memo dictating a funding suspension. Some time later, the NIH resumed important meetings and trips related to the institution’s grant review process.
In addition to confirming NIH grants to align with the president’s policies, Trump also implemented a 15% cap on facilities and management fees included in the Research Grant Awards.
Scientists show pipetting viscous genomic DNA at the sequencing center of the NIH inner wall in Rockville, Maryland on April 13, 2023 (Photo: Washington Post via Carolyn Van Hooten/Getty Images)
The administration’s actions on NIH research have generated widespread backlash. Earlier this month, Trump’s next NIH director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, was plagued by questions from Democrats during a confirmation hearing about whether the president would step in to prevent what is considered a critically important research project.
Bhattacharya never explicitly said that he opposed the cut or that if it was confirmed, he would intervene to them to stop them. Rather, he said he would “follow the law,” but also investigated the impact of the cut and ensured that all NIH researchers who advance American health outcomes have the resources they need to do their job.
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Bhattacharya has also laid out what is called a new distributed vision for future research at the NIH. Bhattacharya said she wanted to remove the institution’s research portfolio from other “frivolous” efforts that say they do little to directly benefit health outcomes.
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