HHS slashes over $350M in grant funding for gender ideology, DEI research projects

FIRST ON FOX: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has canceled hundreds of National Institutes of Health (NIH) research grants-worth over $350 million-funding projects related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and gender ideology, according to a department official.

The cuts included slashing projects studying "multilevel and multidimensional structural racism," "gender-affirming hormone therapy in mice" and "microaggressions," among others. 

One of the grants cut included nearly $1 million to scientists at the University of Maryland-Baltimore for a research project titled, "Assessing intersectional multilevel and multidimensional structural racism for English- and Spanish-speaking populations in the US." The project included work to create an "intersectional, multilevel, and multidimensional Structural Racism Measure" in order to "eliminate health disparities and discrimination" for racial minorities.

"There is an urgent public health need to collect valid and reliable data on structural racism before effective interventions to reduce structural racism can be designed," the project's description stated. 

A separate research project that did not use mice got nearly $1 million "to study possible genomic associations with gender identity." 

Grants focused on recruiting scientists based on their race or ethnicity were also slashed by the Trump administration. A grant worth more than $5 million to researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center to help "achieve more racial and ethnic diversity among our scientific research faculty," included a commitment to hire at least 18 tenure-track faculty "from minoritized racial and ethnic groups."

A judge subsequently issued an order temporarily blocking the administration's funding freeze, and shortly thereafter, the Trump administration rescinded its memo directing the funding halt. A short time after that, the NIH resumed important meetings and travel associated with the agency's grant-review process.  

In addition to reviewing NIH's grant funding to ensure it aligns with the president's policies, Trump also implemented a 15% cap on facilities and administrative costs included in research grant awards.

The administration's actions targeting NIH research have generated widespread backlash. Earlier this month, Trump's pick to be the next NIH director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, was peppered with questions from Democrats during his confirmation hearing over whether he would step in to prevent the president from slashing what they deemed critically important research projects. 

Bhattacharya would not explicitly say he disagreed with the cuts, or that, if confirmed, he would step in to stop them. Rather, he said he would "follow the law," while also investigating the impact of the cuts and ensuring every NIH researcher doing work that advances the health outcomes of Americans has the resources necessary to do their work.