Pace of N.I.H. Funding Slows Further in Trump’s Second Year

Key Points:

• The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is behind by approximately $1 billion in new medical research spending, causing delays in thousands of scientific projects and raising concerns about its ability to fully allocate Congress-approved funds.
• Instead of canceling grants outright as in the early Trump administration, the NIH now uses a computational text analysis tool to screen grant applications for terms related to "racism," "gender," and "vaccination refusal," part of a campaign against so-called "woke science."
• This new vetting process has contributed to a significant slowdown in research funding, with only about 1,900 new and competitive grants awarded from October to late March—less than half the typical number during the Biden administration.
• The prolonged government shutdown last fall severely disrupted grant review meetings, compounding delays and affecting funding across many research fields beyond those targeted by the administration's focus on diversity and inclusion.
• For example, the National Cancer Institute allocated just $72 million for new competitive grants by late March, a fraction of the nearly $250 million usually spent by that point in previous fiscal years.