Last week I explored the dreadful plight of our friends, the ducks, and their comrades, the chickens, without whom the all-American breakfast sandwich would die a painful death. Yes, sadly, as these birds grow sick and die, they have been forced to depend upon the incompetent quacks in charge of our public health system. Now, unfortunately, I need to alert you to the horrifying reality that these same quacks are endangering us all.
Like with pretty much every agency in Donald Trump’s regime, pleasing the boss and pledging undying loyalty has replaced the once-upon-a-time oath to serve the public interest. The U.S. Department of Justice has metamorphized into Donald Trump’s private law firm, and his (formerly our) lawyers—those who have not yet resigned in protest—are engaging in new ways to violate the Constitution and, like the hapless Lindsey Halligan, defending frivolous lawsuits against Trump’s many enemies and prosecuting the unfortunate Black and brown immigrants swept up in Donald Trump’s scheme to bleach America.
When it comes to our health, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. peddles discredited pseudoscience, fires accomplished medical professionals, then replaces them with hacks who agree with him. Time and again, he endangers rather than protects us.
In recent years, we have been bombarded by an avalanche of atrocities, numbing us to the toxic mix of immorality and stupidity that Trump has brought us. Of course, many of the whitest of us can imagine they will be spared the horror of being stopped without cause, beaten and arrested by ICE. Nevertheless, white, Black, brown, and in between—we have all been granted an imperfect body. We cannot escape that reality, and while some of us stay healthier longer than others, sooner or later we all succumb to illness.
The young and old get sick. Meanwhile, so many of us struggle to afford the prescription drugs we depend upon. According to The World Data, almost 48 percent of us suffer from high blood pressure.
The CDC tells us:
An estimated 129 million people in the US have at least 1 major chronic disease … (e.g., heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, hypertension) as defined by the US Department of Health and Human Services … Five of the top 10 leading causes of death in the US are, or are strongly associated with, preventable and treatable chronic diseases … Over the past 2 decades prevalence has increased steadily, and this trend is expected to continue … An increasing proportion of people in America are dealing with multiple chronic conditions; 42% have 2 or more, and 12% have at least 5 … Besides the personal impact, chronic disease has a substantial effect on the US health care system. About 90% of the annual $4.1 trillion health care expenditure is attributed to managing and treating chronic diseases and mental health conditions.
My point is simple. Unlike some of the other tragedies engineered by the incompetence and arrogance of the Trump regime—for example, the continuing accommodation of the war crimes of Vladimir Putin in Ukraine and the recent rebirth of American imperialism in Venezuela—the ineptitude and immorality of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. affects us all on a daily basis, and we cannot escape the results of his failures.
Elon Musk’s demolition of much of our federal government seems to have faded from view. And, sadly, much of America’s mainstream media has yet to return to the scenes of these crimes. But thanks to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and its 2025 court case American Public Health Association et al. v. National Institutes of Health et al., we are able to look behind the curtain to clearly see the extent of the cuts RFK Jr. and Elon Musk made to crucial medical research, as well as what programs they disappeared and who exactly lost their funding and/or their jobs.
Here is how the ACLU describes their case:
In April 2025, researchers, along with American Public Health Association (APHA), the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW), and Ibis Reproductive Health, filed a lawsuit challenging the abrupt cancellation of research grants by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research.
The grants were cancelled after NIH staff were directed to eliminate research on disfavored topics and populations without clear guidance or justification – jeopardizing critical medical discoveries that drive advancements in diagnosing, preventing, and treating life-threatening diseases.
In February, the NIH began a reckless purge of federal grants, halting application processes midstream, and stripping funding opportunities from its website. Hundreds of research projects — many of which had been underway for years, representing thousands of hours of work and billions of dollars in investment — were abruptly cancelled without a scientifically valid explanation.
NIH attempted to justify the first wave of its sweeping grant cancellations by vaguely citing connections to ‘gender identity’ or ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI), without defining these terms or explaining how they apply to the terminated research. As a result, critical studies addressing urgent health disparities — designed to develop prioritized strategies for populations at the highest risk of disease — were indiscriminately wiped out. This eradication of research expanded to include research on ‘vaccine hesitancy,’ ‘COVID,’ and any research being conducted or involving labs located in South Africa and China.
This unprecedented purge marks a sharp departure from the NIH’s longstanding approach, in which funding decisions have been guided by congressional mandates, regulatory requirements, and scientific expertise. NIH grants are among the most competitive and rigorously vetted research funding opportunities in the world, undergoing multiple layers of expert review …
Training grants, some of which are designed to facilitate the entry of researchers from historically underrepresented groups into the biomedical field as mandated by Congress, were also canceled, jeopardizing opportunities for the best and the brightest of the next generation of scientists, particularly harming racial and ethnic minorities, women, people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, and those from rural communities …
The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts against the NIH, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
The lawsuit claims the agency violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) by acting arbitrarily and without justification, failing to provide scientific reasoning or follow proper procedures. NIH also exceeded its legal authority by disregarding congressional mandates to fund health disparities research and address the underrepresentation of certain groups in the medical field, and by failing to comply with grant termination regulations. Additionally, the lawsuit argues that NIH’s actions violate the Fifth Amendment’s due process protections by canceling grants based on vague and undefined criteria. The lawsuit seeks to restore funding to researchers whose grants were unlawfully terminated and to prevent the NIH from continuing to cut awards in this arbitrary and unlawful manner.
Now for me, none of this is academic. I lost two of my closest friends and my mother to cancer; my father to heart disease. Over the course of four decades, I documented the toll Monsanto’s and General Electric’s polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) took on the health of those who worked building and repairing GE’s electric transformers and capacitors. I saw the tragic toxic effect on the wildlife of the Housatonic River. As former GE Manager Ed Bates sadly revealed in my film “Good Things To Life,” he spent far too much time going to the funerals of those who worked under him. Public health is about the health, or lack thereof, of all of us.
I suspect many of you are missing those you loved and those you knew who died too soon. As the ACLU lawsuit notes, the cuts Trump and Kennedy and Musk made will set back crucial attempts to find the cures or treatments for the very diseases that kill so many.
It is interesting to see who exactly is suing them. Their Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief describes one of the chief plaintiffs:
I don’t know about you, but I am all in on working for equitable health and wellbeing for all.
In their opening brief, ACLU argues:
This case challenges an ideological assault on science. Beginning in February 2025, Defendants created and implemented a series of Directives leading to the termination of hundreds of grants—totaling billions of dollars—funded by the National Institutes of Health (‘NIH’). Terminated research includes projects essential to two fundamental, Congressionally-mandated goals: understanding and addressing health disparities among Americans and diversifying the biomedical workforce for the betterment of public health. Defendants have also refused to consider hundreds of funding applications, disrupting scientific progress for years to come.
As a result of this purge, funding for research in critical areas like cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s disease have been gutted or remain at risk, and programs designed to diversify the biomedical workforce have been eliminated wholesale.
[Emphasis added.]
The NIH encompasses 27 different centers and provides almost 50,000 grants totaling billions of dollars to 300,000 independent researchers. These grants fund scientific and biomedical research and provide support to both institutions and individuals for career development and training.
As you might remember, from the very first days of President Trump’s second administration, he issued a series of presidential directives. Here are just some of them:
- Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing
- Withdrawing the United States From the World Health Organization
- Establishing and Implementing the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’
- Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship
- Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government
- Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity
- Reinstating Service Members Discharged Under the Military’s COVID-19 Vaccination Mandate
- Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation
These directives called for abrupt shifts in governmental policy and very significant adjustments to what were once the aims and purposes of government. Prompted in large part by the ultra-conservative agenda of Project 2025, they laid the groundwork for the cuts Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency would insist upon. It quickly became apparent that the aim was not really to make government more efficient or to save money, but rather to dismantle the progressive agenda of the past and make government do exactly what Donald Trump wanted it to do.
This so often meant shifting the focus from democratization, increased opportunity, from racial, social, and gender equality to insider trading, wholesale violations of the Emoluments Clause, and increased tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy. It meant demolishing any vestige of what they dishonestly called the welfare state. It meant pardons for those convicted of breaking the law during the January 6 insurrection, a rapid retreat from a comprehensive strategy to combat the climate crisis, and expanding the power of the executive at the expense of Congress.
So, when it came to the National Institute of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the CDC, they scoured every grant, website, document for any telltale offending words and terms: diversity, equity, inclusion, LGTBQ, transgender, abortion, discriminatory, health disparities, under-represented, minorities, disadvantaged, etc. And since the wealthiest amongst us already had their own private concierge healthcare, why not obliterate the public system the rest of us relied upon.
As the opening brief explains:
In recent months, HHS and NIH have issued a series of directives (‘the Directives’) that suspended NIH funding and have resulted in the termination of billions of dollars in scientific research support for grants and granting programs, and the removal of previously published funding opportunities and applications submitted for the opportunities, all because they allegedly ‘no longer effectuate[] agency priorities.’ … Over the course of all of these Directives, the universe of topics to be defunded expanded: DEI … Transgender issues … Vaccine Hesitancy … COVID … Climate Change … China … Influencing Public Opinion …
One of the most amazing things about right-wing ideologues is their lack of awareness, their utter inability to appreciate their own arrogance. Of course, they seem never able to recognize irony. While, admittedly, DEI programs may not benefit the one percent, they surely benefit the health, mental and otherwise, of many Americans. So really, when Kennedy and Musk and Bhattacharya assert that the programs they are cutting “provide low returns on investment,” the question is who exactly is reaping those returns on investment.
As for vaccine hesitancy, I will have much more to say about that in the future. In the meantime, you can add the ducks, chickens, pigs, cats, now some veterinarians and farmers, as well as all those hospitalized and killed by influenza, measles, and COVID to the list of those who suffer as a result of the increased antipathy to vaccination.
Now, let’s take a closer look at the extent and impact of these NIH cuts.
Christopher Crockett writes for ScienceNews:
Totaling about $3 billion in unspent funds, the cuts by the Trump administration reshaped many fields of science. In 2025, more than 3,800 research grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation were terminated or frozen as part of the Trump administration’s effort to realign funding priorities. As of November 2025, NIH has seen about $2.3 billion in unspent funds across nearly 2,500 grants frozen or terminated. At NSF, over 1,300 grants had about $700 million in unspent funds cut. The chart below estimates how these cuts have affected all research areas supported by both agencies. While this doesn’t capture the full extent of government cuts — science-focused agencies such NASA, NOAA and the EPA aren’t included — it does highlight the breadth of the reductions and the ripple effects likely to be felt throughout the scientific community for years to come. …
The cuts — totaling about $3 billion in remaining funds — targeted initiatives related to diversity, equity and inclusion; environmental protection; vaccine hesitancy; public health and more. These initiatives include:
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- Cancer hub — The largest hit to any NIH grant ($77 million in remaining funds) froze support for Northwestern University’s Lurie Cancer Center, a national hub for cancer research, care and community outreach.
- STEM barriers — Within NSF, the largest terminated grant ($9 million in remaining funds) supported the coordination hub of the agency’s INCLUDES initiative, which aims to make the STEM workforce more diverse by supporting large-scale efforts to remove systemic barriers. The hub connects hundreds of researchers, organizations and community groups working toward this goal.
- Vaccine uptake — One terminated grant ($200,000 in unspent funds) aimed to understand and reduce COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among young Black adults in three Southern states.
- Diverse immune cells — A grant to investigate how neurons regulate specialized immune cells in the retina lost its $490,000 of remaining funding. While the reason for its termination is unclear, the grant mentions that these cells exhibit remarkable ‘diversity,’ a term the administration has flagged as problematic. [Irony alert.]
- Education disparities — The University System of Maryland Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation program aims to increase the number of underrepresented college students in Maryland. A grant to study the impact of these efforts by gender, ethnicity and transfer status was terminated, with $1.7 million still to be spent …
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[Emphasis added.]
I want to highlight the cancellation of the $77 million grant to Northwestern University’s Lurie Cancer Center. According to the Lurie Cancer Center:
Nearly 300 members conduct groundbreaking laboratory, clinical, prevention, behavior and population-based investigations to spur innovative clinical trials and provide cutting-edge treatment options that are often not available elsewhere … The Lurie Cancer Center Clinical Trials Office (CTO) provides a centralized resource to facilitate the development, conduct, quality assurance monitoring, compliance with regulatory agency requirements and evaluation of clinical research trials at the Lurie Cancer Center. As such, the office coordinates the majority of clinical research conducted in medical oncology, malignant hematology, gynecologic-oncology, neuro-oncology, radiation oncology, surgical oncology and chemoprevention.
Meanwhile, we have a Caribbean aircraft carrier task force stationed off the shore of Venezuela and the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group operating near Iran, with another carrier group getting ready to sail there. It is estimated that each of these battle groups each cost 6.5 million a day. Wouldn’t you rather be spending money to find a cure for cancer?
Beyond the drastic consequences for critical research and the loss of potential medical breakthroughs, there are the dreadful impacts on the people involved in these projects. For several years now, we have been lectured about the evils of programs that encourage diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The sworn deposition of Nicole Maphis, one of the plaintiffs in this suit, offers just one example of what we have lost by disqualifying all grants that address DEI:
I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of New Mexico (UNM) and have been since June 2021. I have devoted my research career to understanding Alzheimer’s disease and dementia due to my grandmother’s diagnosis and slow submission to this awful disease. I have also pursued postdoctoral training in a lab focused on alcohol exposure to learn how consumption of excessive rates of alcohol could exacerbate the pathogenesis behind Alzheimer’s disease. In the lab I mentor students, devise research projects, draft proposals and write manuscripts for publication. I have seven first author publications that explore tauopathy (which is the development of abnormal accumulations of a protein inside neurons, known as tau, seen within the brain of patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia …
I am the first person in my family to attend and graduate from college. I am from a low-income family and fit the criteria for a disadvantaged background as defined in Section C.7.(b) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s Notice of Interest in Diversity … Given these circumstances, I graduated from college with significant student loan debt. Following college, I worked as a technician/lab manager in two different research labs studying Alzheimer’s disease for nearly 9 years before going to graduate school. During graduate school I focused my training on tauopathy and neuroinflammation and I developed and tested a patented immunotherapy …
From September 1, 2021–August 30, 2024, I was trained as a postdoctoral fellow within Institutional Research and Career Development Award (IRACDA) program at UNM, known there as Academic Science and Educational Research Training (ASERT). This distinguished national award provides salary and a small stipend to support education training and scientific research to educate and train the next generation of science educators, mentors, and scientific researchers …
I submitted my first MOSAIC K99/R00 to the PAR-21-271 for the deadline of February 12, 2024. I chose the MOSAIC (i.e. diversity mechanism) because I fit the criteria of a diverse candidate, being a woman, the first in my family to graduate college, and from a low socioeconomic family, but more so I wanted to apply to this program because I really excel in cohort-based models of career development … I also meet the qualifications of a MOSAIC candidate since I devote substantial time and efforts to DEI/STEM-related outreach including:
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- Teaching a neuroscience workshop at a summer camp for 7th grade girls
- Helping to organize/host an outreach event called the New Mexico Brain Bee (a high school outreach event geared at getting high school students interested in neurosciences careers) for the last 10+ years
- Helping teach numerous STEM outreach events geared at middle school populations …
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In June 2024 I found out my initial MOSAIC K99/R00 application was ND (Not Discussed) by the assigned study group when they convened. ND is a common outcome for first-time applicants, as the process to get these awards is very difficult and time consuming … I then revised the initial application based on the feedback, provided in a document called a summary statement, by the three anonymous reviewers who are part of the -AA4 NIAAA study section …
Because of NIH’s refusal to consider my application, I have lost out on two years (the K99 phase of the award) where I would have received cutting-edge training on my four specific and unique training goals that were detailed in the Career Development Plan included in my MOSAIC K99/R00 application … My institution (UNM) has lost out on the opportunity to train me for the next two years, and may not have the money to support my salary. UNM has also lost out on the indirect costs from the training portion (K99) of this grant, which is a percentage of the K99 award that is added to the overall award. The K99 portion was estimated to be $250,000 or $125,000/year for 2 years …
The research that is now being shelved would have helped the public gain a more integral understanding of how alcohol use and alcohol use disorder could contribute to the development of Alzheimer’s disease or the progression of this devastating disease, finding potential mechanisms and maybe even targetable pathways to reduce injuries induced by excessive alcohol consumption.
We have, in fact, lost so many qualified people to the purges by Trump, Kennedy, Musk, and Bhattacharya:
Science.org reports:
Some 10,109 doctoral-trained experts in science and related fields left their jobs last year as President Donald Trump dramatically shrank the overall federal workforce. That exodus was only 3% of the 335,192 federal workers who exited last year but represents 14% of the total number of Ph.D.s in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) or health fields employed at the end of 2024 as then-President Joe Biden prepared to leave office.
The numbers come from employment data posted earlier this month by the White House Office of Personnel Management (OPM). At 14 research agencies Science examined in detail, departures outnumbered new hires last year by a ratio of 11 to one, resulting in a net loss of 4224 STEM Ph.D.s. The graphs that follow show the impact is particularly striking at such scientist-rich agencies as the National Science Foundation (NSF). But across the government, these departing Ph.D.s took with them a wealth of subject matter expertise and knowledge about how the agencies operate …
The National Institutes of Health tops the list with more than 1100 departures, compared with 421 in 2024.
I appreciate that there is a case to be made that we need to reform our immigration system. If one travels abroad to Mexico, Latin America, Europe, China, one accepts the requirement to secure a visa to visit. We accept the realities of borders and sovereignty. And, along with the need for a rational, fact-based asylum procedure, we recognize the need for a thoughtful and fair process for applying for and granting citizenship.
But for the life of me, I am unable to find a single justification for the Trump administration’s war on science, on rationality, and their refusal to accept the continuing need to expand opportunity to educate, train, and expand our pool of doctors and nurses and medical researchers. We need to provide grants and subsidies to reinvigorate our understanding of infectious diseases and better protect our citizens. Not only have these highly politicized cuts undermined medical professionals, training centers, and cutting-edge research, they have had disastrous impacts on a wide variety of completely innocent patients:
As the American Journal of Managed Care reveals:
NIH grant terminations disrupted 3.5% of active clinical trials, affecting over 74,000 participants and resulting in a $1.81 billion funding loss. The National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities experienced the highest number of terminated grants.
Infectious disease was hit hardest by funding cuts to NIH grants for clinical trials that did not align with the Trump administration’s priorities. Approximately 1 in 30 trials were disrupted by research grant terminations at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) earlier this year, with infectious disease studies impacted most … The researchers described clinical trials as ‘the principal mechanism for evaluating medical interventions,’ noting that their implementation is resource-intensive and often dependent on external funding. Since President Donald Trump took office in January, his administration has made several demands of the NIH, including directing the agency to terminate grants on topics that do not align with its priorities …
So here we are, forced to live with the consequences of the near-lethal combination of political expediency—the lame pro-MAGA loyalty tests agreed to by all those who want to serve—and the rampant stupidity they bring to the enforcement of the reductive Trump agenda. So would it surprise you if throughout this process of slashing grants, halting research, and reducing staff, Musk and RFK Jr. relied on bureaucrats who simply searched a series of databases for the offending terms and disqualify all that might upset Donald Trump?
As the brief puts it:
Pursuant to these Directives, Defendants swiftly terminated hundreds of grants previously subjected to a rigorous selection process and found to align with NIH priorities … including grants addressing research areas essential for public health and diversifying the workforce. … The record—even with its limitations—shows that the purges occurred without any scientific or individualized review.
The Directives followed Executive Orders from President Trump requiring, among other things, that agency heads ‘terminate, to the maximum extent allowed by law, all … “equity related” grants or contracts’ within 60 days.’ [sic] … On February 10, 2025, the ‘Secretarial Directive on DEI-related Funding’ (‘Secretarial Directive’) instructed agencies to ‘briefly pause’ payments made to grantees ‘related to DEI and similar programs’ and stated that ‘grants may be terminated in accordance with federal law.’
As we have seen time and again, the Trump Administration, enabled by his Department of Justice, has reconfigured the law to serve their desires. And when it comes to the National Institutes of Health and the CDC, the Administration decided not to be inconvenienced by court injunctions. The ACLU brief notes that on February 12, 2025 ‘the Acting General Counsel ‘clarif[ied]’ that agencies could ‘exercise their own lawful authorities to withhold funding,’ … and ‘Supplemental Guidance’ issued the next day directed grants-management officers to ‘fully restrict[]’ grants where the ‘sole purpose’ is to support ‘DEI activities.’ … The Supplemental Guidance provided neither a definition of ‘DEI activities’ nor discussion of how to discern whether a grant supports the same …
On February 21, 2025, NIH issued a ‘Directive on NIH Priorities’ requiring the agency to cease its support of ‘low-value and off-mission research programs,’ including studies based on ‘DEI’ and ‘gender identity’ (the ‘February 21 Directive’), neither of which were defined … The record reflects that the Directive stated, without citation or backing from any evidence, that ‘[r]esearch programs based primarily on artificial and non-scientific categories, including amorphous equity objectives, are antithetical to the scientific inquiry, do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment, and ultimately do not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness.’ … A cover email from Matt Memoli—the Acting NIH Director—forwarding the Directive to a number of NIH staff indicated that NIH could ‘set priorities at an NIH level, which now allows us to proceed with the process of making sure programs are meeting these goals.’ …
The first wave of grant terminations soon followed. On February 28, 2025, Memoli emailed Bundesen (copying DOGE and HHS officials), attaching a spreadsheet of grants and instructing NIH to ‘p]lease terminate the grants on the attached spreadsheet by COB today … Bulk terminations followed …
On March 13, 2025, NIH issued another Directive (the ‘Awarded Revision Guidance’), which adds vaccine hesitancy to the list of deprioritized topics and provided the following termination boilerplate: ‘It is the policy of NIH not to prioritize [insert termination category language]. Therefore, this project is terminated.’ … On March 13, 2025, Memoli emailed NIH officials with a list of 450 grants to terminate over the following week … And on March 24, 2025, he sent another email stating ‘We have been asked to terminate the list of approximately 120 grants by COB today.’
[Emphasis added.]
On June 6, 2025, Judge William G. Young issued the following:
PROPOSED ORDER & JUDGMENT.
Having considered the evidence presented at the partial trial on the merits conducted on June 16, 2025, the Court holds that Plaintiffs have demonstrated that the challenged Directives (specified below) are unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act, and therefore such Directives are vacated and set aside. Moreover, Plaintiffs have satisfied the requisite factors for permanent injunctive relief.
Pursuant to 5 U.S.C. § 706(2) and Fed R. Civ. P. 65, it is hereby ORDERED that: 1. The following Directives from the National Institute of Health (‘NIH’) and U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (‘HHS’), referred to collectively as ‘the Directives,’ are DECLARED unlawful:
a. The February 10, 2025 directive issued by the Acting Secretary of HHS entitled ‘Secretarial Directive on DEI-Related Funding.’ …
b. The February 12, 2025 memorandum entitled ‘NIH Review of Agency Priorities Based on the New Administration’s Goals.’ …
e. The March 4, 2025 memorandum issued by NIH, entitled ‘Staff Guidance – Award Assessments for Alignment with Agency Priorities – March 2025.’ …
f. The March 13, 2025 directive issued by Michelle Bulls, entitled ‘Award Revision Guidance and List of Terminated Grants via letter on 3/12.’ …
g. The March 20, 2025 memorandum issued by Sean R. Keveney, the Acting General Counsel at HHS, entitled ‘Termination of COVID-19 Grants.’ …
k. Any other directive—including any non-public or undisclosed directives, whether written or unwritten—that pauses, eliminates or withholds NIH funding for previously advertised funding opportunities or previously awarded grants, on the grounds that the funding opportunities or grants relate to a topic deemed by Defendants to ‘no longer effectuate[] agency priorities.’ Those topics include, but are not limited to: ‘DEI’/’Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,’ ‘Equity Objectives,’ ‘Transgender Issues,’ ‘Gender Identity,’ ‘Climate Change,’ ‘Countries of Concern, e.g. China or South Africa,’ ‘Vaccine Hesitancy,’ and ‘COVID-related.’
2. Defendants’ actions to implement the Directives, including but not limited to the termination of grants and grant programs and withdrawing applications or otherwise refusing review for reasons set forth in the Directives, are DECLARED unlawful.
3. Pursuant to 5 U.S.C. § 706(2), the unlawful Directives set forth in Paragraph 1(a)-(k) of this Order are hereby SET ASIDE AND VACATED:
a. All grants and Notices of Funding Opportunity (‘NOFOs’) shall be returned to the status quo ante, before the Directives were issued, and all efforts to implement the Directives must be unwound;
b. Accordingly, within seven (7) days of the issuance of this Order, Defendants must reinstate all grants terminated pursuant to the Directives retroactive to the respective termination date and through at least the end of their original project end date, and shall allow no-cost extensions on all reinstated grants where necessary to address the period of project interruption;
c. Within seven (7) days of the issuance of this Order, Defendants must restore all NOFOs that were unpublished pursuant to the Directives; and
d. Effective immediately, Defendants must begin to consider all applications withdrawn or for which review was refused pursuant to the Directives as if the Directives were never issued.
4. A PERMANENT INJUNCTION is entered in this case: a. Defendants are enjoined from implementing the unlawful Directives, including doing so under any other name or guise, against the Plaintiffs and individuals who are Members of Plaintiff American Public Health Association (‘APHA’) and Plaintiff the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Workers (‘UAW’) …
On June 16, 2025, the ACLU issued a press release which stated:
In a major victory for public health, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts today struck down the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) directives that led to the cancellation of research grants based on sweeping, politically driven criteria. The court ruled that NIH’s actions targeting research involving disfavored topics and populations were unlawful, arbitrary and capricious, and therefore void. The court reversed the grant terminations at issue in the case, stating that the government must immediately make the funds available.
‘Today’s decision is a crucial step in protecting public health and safeguarding critical research that helps us understand, prevent, and treat life-threatening diseases,’ said plaintiff Dr. Brittany Charlton, associate professor at Harvard Chan School of Public Health. ‘Scientific research must be guided by evidence, not political agendas, and this ruling rightly restores important research projects that should never have been disrupted.’ …
‘The court’s ruling is a critical check on the dangerous politicization of science,’ said Kenneth Parreno, counsel at Protect Democracy. ‘By purging research funding based on ideology rather than evidence, the government didn’t just break the law; it sought to dictate what science is allowed to study and who gets to benefit. That’s not just an attack on researchers — it’s an attack on democracy itself. Today’s decision affirms that public institutions must serve the public interest, not political agendas.’
Then, as has often been the case these last few years, the United States Supreme Court stepped in to partially rule in favor of President Trump. On August 21, 2025, the ACLU wrote:
In a significant setback for public health, the U.S. Supreme Court today ruled that the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts likely lacked jurisdiction to review the termination of research grants by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) targeting research on disfavored topics and populations. However, the Supreme Court declined to stay the district court’s conclusion that the NIH’s directives violated the Administrative Procedures Act (APA).
The legal team for the plaintiffs issued the following statement:
We are very disappointed by the Supreme Court’s ruling that our challenge to the sweeping termination of hundreds of critical biomedical research grants likely belongs in the Court of Federal Claims. This decision is a significant setback for public health. We are assessing our options but will work diligently to ensure that these unlawfully terminated grants continue to be restored.
However, it is important to note that the Supreme Court declined to stay the District Court’s conclusion that the NIH’s directives were unreasonable and unlawful. This means that NIH cannot terminate any research studies based on these unlawful directives.
Then, on December 29, 2025, the ACLU announced a partial settlement with the NIH:
Grant applications that were arbitrarily frozen, denied, or withdrawn by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will now receive individual evaluations under an agreement announced today in a lawsuit brought on behalf of scientists whose careers were upended by unlawful NIH policy directives. Under a stipulated dismissal, the NIH has agreed to use its standard process to render decisions on the plaintiffs’ stalled applications, which address urgent public health issues, including HIV prevention, Alzheimer’s disease, LGBTQ+ health, and sexual violence.
I want to end by hearing once again from Nikki Maphis, who, thanks to the ACLU and Judge Young, will now be able to resume her work on Alzheimer’s:
This agreement allows my grant application, and many others, to move forward for review after an arbitrary and destructive freeze. I’m building a career around studying the aging brain, with a particular focus on Alzheimer’s disease and alcohol use, said plaintiff Nikki Maphis, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of New Mexico. ‘I look forward to having my funding proposal evaluated fairly so that I can continue contributing to urgent and unmet public health needs …’
Clearly, we must remain vigilant as men like Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Dr. Jay Bhattarchya attempt to substitute more quackery for evidence-based science. I am grateful that in this case—thanks to the brave scientists and researchers and the ACLU—perseverance, integrity, and science triumphed over quackery.
