Trump administration halts, then releases, NIH research funding

The Trump administration on Tuesday temporarily halted all funding for science research issued by the National Institutes of Health before releasing the funds later in the day, according to emails obtained by The Washington Post and more than a half-dozen federal officials familiar with the matter.

The halt stemmed from a footnote in an Office of Management and Budget document, according to an email sent to NIH staff Tuesday afternoon by the NIH’s associate director for budget, Neil Shapiro. The OMB gave the NIH its “full-year apportionment” of congressionally mandated funds, Shapiro wrote, but included a footnote limiting what the NIH could spend the money on.

Finance officials within the agency “interpreted this footnote to permit NIH obligations only for salaries, administrative expenses, and Clinical Center expenses,” Shapiro wrote. But research money including “research grant, R & D contract, or training awards cannot be issued during this pause,” Shapiro wrote.

He added: “We are working to make this limitation short-term and temporary.”

If the money had not later been unfrozen, the move would have affected about $15 billion in federal funds, according to the office of Sen. Patty Murray (Washington), the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Contacted for comment Tuesday evening, less than four hours after Shapiro sent his email, OMB spokeswoman Rachel Cauley said that the money will be given out.

“This was a programmatic review of NIH funding,” Cauley wrote. “The funds were released.”

Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH, confirmed the pause in a statement early Tuesday evening. He later referred questions to the OMB’s statement that the funding had been released.

The Wall Street Journal reported on the freeze earlier Tuesday.

The dustup over NIH spending is part of a debate within the Trump administration over federal spending and whether the government is moving too quickly to institute cuts. Some political appointees have balked at efforts to curb the NIH’s funding, including the OMB’s proposed 40% cut to the agency’s budget, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations.

“I don’t see in the Congress almost any desire at all to implement the cuts that were proposed in the OMB budget,” NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya said in an interview with Federal News Network posted Tuesday.

OMB Director Russell Vought and other senior Trump officials have argued that they have a mandate to rein in spending.

“We have an agency that needs dramatic overhaul,” Vought said on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, citing examples of NIH grants that he called wasteful. “Thankfully, we have a great new head of it, but we’re going to have to go line by line to make sure the NIH is funded properly.”

But Democrats and research advocacy groups said that any pause in NIH research funding would be harmful, criticizing Vought and other Trump officials for a series of moves that have pressured America’s premier biomedical agency.

“Instead of trying to destroy the NIH, which has long been the envy of the world, President Trump and Russ Vought should study up on the Constitution, which makes clear they don’t get to decide for themselves that they are going to rip hopes of new treatments and cures away from patients across America,” Murray said in a statement. The longtime senator argued with Vought in a Senate hearing last month over whether the administration’s cuts would harm public health and if they were legal.

Officials within the government have warned that the administration might try to test a 1974 budget law by refusing to spend congressionally mandated funds and that money has been slowed, stopped or delayed. Though the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office has issued two rulings that funds have been “impounded,” or illegally withheld, the White House has denied that any money has been withheld.

In a letter last week, key Republican senators wrote to Vought, requesting that the White House allow the NIH to spend its funds for the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

“We are concerned by the slow disbursement rate … as it risks undermining critical research and the thousands of American jobs it supports,” the letter stated. “We respectfully request that you ensure the timely release of all FY25 NIH appropriations in accordance with congressional intent.”

As of May 1, the NIH had received a little more than half the congressionally appropriated money it is supposed to receive this year, according to a person familiar with the situation. It should have $46 billion but until recently was operating with just $25 billion, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Top NIH leaders and other staff were pulled into meetings Tuesday to discuss the OMB’s planned research funding pause, what it meant and how long it might last, according to interviews with a half-dozen NIH staffers, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

“Our leadership team spent 90 minutes today making funding decisions and having other grant-related conversations,” said a senior leader at one NIH institute. “At my level we are legitimately trying to figure out how to keep funding high-impact science given what we expect will happen.”

The senior leader added: “Our grants people are barely holding it together because they are at the center of this chaos.”