Last year, Trump Admin cut 2,000 research grants for cancer, ALS, Alzheimer’s disease and more
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), ranking member on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education questioned National Institutes for Health (NIH) Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on President Donald Trump’s Fiscal Year 2027 budget, which cuts nearly $6 billion from the agency tasked with supporting lifesaving research for cures to cancer, ALS, Alzheimer’s, and other diseases. She also pressed the NIH Director on the Trump Administration terminating over 5,000 NIH grants, slashing nearly a quarter of the NIH workforce, and cutting the number of new research grants by more than 2,000, or 22 percent.
“I can’t comprehend why this administration is so hell bent on sabotaging the life-saving research that NIH supports, but they are doing so at every turn. What concerns me most is that this damage will take years, if not decades, to undo,” said Senator Baldwin. “The cost is so much higher than lab closures, canceled clinical trials, or young investigators leaving science. The cost will be fewer treatments and cures, lost loved ones, and an entire generation of scientists gone.”
Senator Baldwin delivers opening remarks at hearing on NIH funding
At the hearing, Senator Baldwin pressed Dr. Bhattacharya on the Trump Administration cutting the number of new grants meant to find cures to serious illnesses and diseases that the NIH funds by more than 2,000 in Fiscal Year 2025. This dramatic drop in new research grants can largely be attributed to the Trump Administration’s multi-year funding scheme that locked away $2.5 billion for future years that could have been used to support more than 2,000 research grants this year in our race to find cures for cancer, ALS, Alzheimer’s disease, and other devastating diseases. Senator Baldwin also highlighted how Institute and Center leadership vacancies across NIH are threatening Americans’ health, including at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in the midst of an emerging Ebola outbreak.
Senator Baldwin also raised concerns about the influx of politics into grantmaking decisions at NIH and the shifting criteria for awarding grants that put politics before science. Despite Senator Baldwin working to increase NIH’s budget by $415 million for Fiscal Year 2026, the White House delayed getting that money out the door and left NIH unable to fund research for 40 days. This slow walking, combined with staffing cuts and Trump’s multi-year funding scheme, means that NIH will award thousands fewer research grants this year; the fewest research grants it has awarded any year since 2017.
A full video of Senator Baldwin’s opening statement is available here.
An online version of this release is available here.
