Federal judge expands block on Trump administration effort to cut public health funding

(CNN) — The Trump administration’s effort to cut back on federal funding for the National Institutes of Health for research programs at universities and medical systems has been blocked nationwide.

On Monday, lawyers representing dozens of research institutions told Judge Angel Kelley of the federal district court of Massachusetts that the change “will devastate critical public health research at universities and research institutions in the United States. Without relief from NIH’s action, these institutions’ cutting edge work to cure and treat human disease will grind to a halt.”

Virtually the entire academic and medical communities across the country went to court seeking emergency help.

In hundreds of pages of sworn statements, more than 30 medical system research directors and university leaders describe how research funding cutbacks would devastate their work and harm patients.

One chemistry professor from the State University of New York who studies Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases wrote that the cost reduction by the NIH “will cost thousands of Americans their lives.”

A second lawsuit — helmed by prominent conservative lawyer Paul Clement and other major attorneys — on Monday from American research universities also told the court the NIH cuts would “devastate medical research.”

A third similar lawsuit filed Monday from major groups representing medical schools, pharmacy schools and hospitals had asked Kelley to expand her initial action to apply not just to states that had sued.

Kelley agreed with 22 Democrat-led states that cost cutting should be blocked temporarily.

Late Monday night, Kelley expanded the pause on the NIH cost-cutting nationwide, writing the NIH and the Department of Health and Human Services and “their officers, employees, servants, agents, appointees, and successors are hereby enjoined from taking any steps to implement, apply, or enforce” the NIH cost-cutting “in any form with respect to institutions nationwide until further order is issued by this Court.”

The Trump administration had planned to significantly reduce the amount it underwrites nationally at both public and private universities for funding the overhead costs of research programs.

Under the administration’s plan, funding from the National Institutes of Health, known as indirect cost rates, would be capped at 15% from an average of more than 27%. Some research institutions, including Harvard, have rates higher than 60%, according to the NIH, which said in a post on X last week that the policy would save more than $4 billion a year.

Those rates are aimed at covering the various overhead costs — like facility costs, regulatory compliance and administrative support — that research institutions must account for to support their research.

CNN’s Meg Tirrell and Tierney Sneed contributed to this report.

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