Research universities won another short-term victory in federal court Friday over a plan to slash billions in grant funding from the National Institutes of Health. A federal judge extended a temporary block to that plan, the latest court ruling slowing attempts by the Trump administration to quickly reduce or freeze federal grant spending.
But despite court orders to maintain the status quo of funding, it appears NIH grants have already slowed down. A WESA analysis of funding data from the NIH found that the agency has slowed down its regular pace of grant awards since President Donald Trump took office in January.
Experts in education research funding, former NIH staffers and researchers themselves said it’s hard to narrow down one cause for the delay, but they all agreed that confusion created by a flurry of executive orders dismissing certain research categories is a factor.
And with almost all grant review meetings on indefinite hold at NIH, the plunge in funding is likely to continue.
Between Inauguration Day and Feb. 15, roughly $781 million have been awarded to projects at research institutions nationwide. That’s a nearly 56% decrease compared to the same period in 2024 when $1.8 billion were awarded.
Using the NIH RePORTER database, WESA calculated the amount of money awarded during the first month of Trump’s second term and compared that to awards posted during the same period going back 10 years. So far, 2025 NIH grant amounts are lower than they were during the Biden administration and even during Trump’s first term in office.
The NIH office of extramural research acknowledged that the agency makes “data available to the public to conduct their own analysis,” but it declined to comment on the numbers shared by WESA.
NIH data show that the Pittsburgh region has seen a decrease comparable to the nationwide slump. In the time since Trump took office, Pittsburgh research institutions have received $11.65 million, a 58% decrease compared to the same period in 2024. In 2020, the final year of Trump’s first term, Pittsburgh received more than double what it has so far this year: $28.08 million between Jan. 20 and Feb.15.
The drop could illustrate effects of the sweeping funding cuts proposed by President Trump, even while their formal implementation remains tied up in court.
The University of Pittsburgh, the highest recipient of grant funding in Western Pennsylvania, declined to comment on the apparent slowing of funds. Carnegie Mellon University, another Pittsburgh-based NIH grant recipient, also declined to comment on the data. A spokesperson said CMU would not comment on NIH funding during ongoing litigation against the federal government over plans to slash support for research overhead costs.
The Trump administration directed the NIH earlier this month to cap funds for indirect costs at 15%, which the agency said would save the government $4 billion annually. But the plan could drive a hole into the budget of major medical research institutions. If the NIH had implemented these cuts for the 2024 fiscal year, the University of Pittsburgh would have seen a $115 million drop in indirect funds, which cover facilities, equipment and support staff.
A coalition of states and research universities has filed multiple lawsuits attempting to block the policy, alleging that such changes would grind innovative medical research to a halt, forcing labs to close and lay off workers. But critics argue grants for indirect costs are a waste of taxpayer dollars. Proponents of reducing federal spending, including the libertarian think tank Cato Institute, claim that indirect-costs grants could be used as a slush fund because some institutions channel the money into a shared pool.
The funding slowdown during Trump’s first month back in office doesn’t necessarily indicate a cut to funds for existing research. Most of the grants WESA analyzed that have been awarded in the Pittsburgh region this month supported ongoing research.
The NIH did not comment on whether its RePORTER website was behind in posting new grant award notices, though such a delay could also have an impact on the numbers analyzed by WESA.
But sources tell WESA that the difference likely illustrates the impact of a stoppage of awards for new projects. That theory seems to be supported by dozens of social media posts this week from researchers claiming their projects are languishing in an uncertain state of limbo.
Whether the drop is driven by backlogged approvals, federal staffing reductions or pivoting priorities under the Trump administration, the result has been fewer dollars to support scientific research this month.
Canceled review meetings leaves research in a quagmire
Chaos created by a blitz of executive orders aimed at shrinking the federal workforce and slashing budgets for programs related to gender identity or diversity, equity and inclusion has clogged the federal funding infrastructure, according to two former NIH employees who spoke to WESA on the condition of anonymity because they fear speaking publicly may invite reprisals or jeopardize future employment.
Official communications from the NIH reviewed by WESA state that under “current guidance” grants “can be awarded,” but the communication did not state whether that was happening this week.
“No new projects are being started,” said a former NIH institute director. And meetings required by law to approve grants are also not happening, they said. The NIH has not issued any calls for new grants since January 22, the third day of Trump’s term.
An NIH staffer who oversaw certain outgoing grant awards said that in the past month, virtually all new grants have been paused while the agency looks for language that could run afoul of the Trump administration’s block on DEI initiatives.
That staffer was laid off last weekend alongside more than 1,000 others at the NIH. And that workforce shrinkage could further slow grant reviews, the staffer said.
“We were already understaffed and overworked,” they said. “Working overtime, weekends, that was standard.”
Though some research institutions will be able to weather the storm, the former NIH staffer said, the clog in funding infrastructure could be catastrophic for young labs and researchers.
“It’s going to be a shock that will be hard to recover from for many labs,” they said. “And the junior [researchers] that are just getting their career started, this could be a career-ender for all of them.”
Since much of the implementation of the executive orders has been left up to interpretation, NIH staffers said research not centered on DEI initiatives is being impacted too, according to NIH staff.
“Most of what's not being funded are very basic studies or clinical trials of Alzheimer's and heart disease and animal studies of basic biological processes and they just don't have any political component to them at all,” the former director said.
Though funds have been unusually slow during the first weeks of the Trump administration, NIH staff say there is hope that an equally unusual boom in funds later could balance out the damage.
“If they allow grants to ultimately go out, there should be a big spike coming up in the next couple of months, which is what everybody is hoping for,” said a former staffer.
But as approval meetings continue to be canceled without indication of when they could be rescheduled, others who have worked at the NIH are less optimistic.
“It's just going to get worse and worse,” said the former director. “There really isn't very much money going out the door now compared to the normal pace. I think the 2025 lines are just going to fall further and further behind.”
Other obstacles clogging the pipeline
Grant awards appear to decline in mid-January before coming to a screeching halt in early February, according to NIH data. That timeline aligns with when Trump's executive orders were announced.
“There were hiccups when the initial funding freeze was put in place, and that may have stopped some of this,” said Holden Thorp, a professor at George Washington University and editor-in-chief of the Science family of journals. Thorp spoke on behalf of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
NIH has scaled back its funding before: The 2008 recession brought budget cuts, and the COVID-19 pandemic required a significant shift in priorities. But Thorp said what we’re seeing now is new.
“What’s different here is that there's a philosophical problem in addition to just a financial problem,” he said, pointing to Trump’s statements discouraging scientific research that emphasizes diversity, equity and inclusion. But Thorp stopped short of arguing that Trump’s proposed funding freezes are the sole driver behind the drop in funding.
And others stressed that NIH hesitation and evolving strategies by the research institutions themselves could play a role. Sarah Spreitzer, vice president and chief of staff for government relations at the American Council on Education, said it’s difficult to summarize how many moving parts could be backlogging funds. The American Council on Education is a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the proposed indirect funding cap.
Spreitzer said during the confusion about how reliable future federal grant funding would be, some research institutions, including the University of Iowa, have taken their own pause.
“Some institutions and some researchers are actually kind of slowing down and trying to figure out if they're even going to try to apply for federal funding,” she said.
And she said agencies like NIH could be wary of spending on new projects before Congress finishes its budget process.
“If they're concerned about funding being provided for new programs or funding cuts coming in fiscal year 2025, the agency may be worried about allocating funds,” she said.
Congress is closing in on a March 14 deadline to prevent a government shutdown, and a plan to keep the lights on has not been made clear. Without an agreement, Congress could agree to another continuing resolution to extend the existing funding to avoid a shutdown.
But the former NIH institute director downplayed the impact of a budget impasse on whether the NIH continues to award funds that have already been appropriated by Congress.
“There may be a little bit of that, but I think this is mostly [the result of] ideologically driven decisions about NIH,” they said. “[There is] this wholesale sort of blocking research without regard to what it is and then these not well-defined executive orders to decide what sort of research is OK and not OK.”
And another NIH staffer said Congressional budget uncertainty is not a new problem for the agency, which has had to continue funding during fragile budget talks on several occasions.
“You can look at previous years like last year, there was a continuing resolution at this point in time and money was still flowing,” they said.
During the 2019 federal government shutdown, the longest in U.S. history, WESA found that $1.57 billion was still awarded to research institutions between January 20 and February 15. The shutdown lasted through January 25 and suspended some federal services during that time.
Whether Congress will be able to reach a deal before its next budget deadline is yet to be seen. But moving forward, Thorp argues Pennsylvania and its research institutions could be a major voice for federal grant funding as lawmakers negotiate the 2025 spending plan.
“You’ve got a lot of NIH activity in the state,” Thorp said. “Pennsylvania should be very influential in the months to come.”
But he stressed that any public campaign would likely have to be led by Pennsylvania’s senators and congressional representatives as universities fear speaking out could put a target on their backs.
“I think the institutions are worried about saying stuff because they don't want to stick their head out and be recognized by the administration as causing problems,” said Thorp, who for five years was the chancellor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“Between the indirect cost cuts and this choppy activity at the NIH itself, I think there's plenty of good reasons for people to be anxious,” he said.
But Pennsylvania has not signed onto a lawsuit filed by 22 states seeking to block Trump's policy on indirect research funding. A spokesperson for Attorney General Dave Sunday said the office is speaking to Pennsylvania's research institutions, but that it had no update about any plans to join legal challenges.
And though the research sector has only begun to understand how a reduced NIH workforce could further impact research funding, Spreitzer said fewer people to process grants would almost certainly result in slowing down the funding infrastructure even further. And that could throw a wrench in what research institutions can afford to do.
“I think that the partnership between the federal government and our institutions of higher education is really at a turning point right now,” Spreitzer said.
Data analysis
To conduct our analysis on the impact of NIH reducing indirect research costs to 15%, we leaned on methodology the New York Times used in a similar national report. Using FY2024 data from NIH’s RePORT registry, we limited our analysis to Pennsylvania institutions. We removed any grants that did not break out direct/indirect costs and ones where combined direct and indirect costs were not within 5% of the listed total funding. To calculate the Funding w/Trump Cuts column, we multiplied institutions’ total direct costs by 15% and then combined those two figures. To find the Estimated Change, we subtracted the Funding w/Trump Cuts from the listed 2024 Funding. (To view all columns in the table, turn your phone horizontally or view on a computer/tablet).
