NIH Director Signals Potential cuts to Restored DEI Grants

Researchers have been encouraged by recent legal decisions challenging National Institutes of Health (NIH) directives to halt or deprioritize work related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

In June, two lawsuits against the Trump administration in Boston federal court resulted in the restoration of funding for more than 2,000 terminated grants. And just this week, an agreement with the plaintiffs to reconsider DEI-related research applications led to the funding of over a hundred grants whose reviews had been paused. However, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya suggested on a recent podcast that this relief might be temporary for the grants restored in June, as they could be terminated within the next year.

“As I understand the legal side of things, we were forced to restore those paused grants, but we can’t cut them right now,” Bhattacharya told journalist Paul Thacker. “But when renewal time comes around, those grants don’t align with NIH priorities. I’ve issued a director’s statement saying, ‘We’re not interested in funding DEI anymore.’ So, we won’t renew them as they come up for renewal throughout the year.”

It’s unclear if these comments apply to the stalled proposals currently being re-evaluated under the new NIH-plaintiffs agreement, as the NIH wasn’t legally required to restore those. A Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson declined to comment on Bhattacharya’s remarks, stating, “NIH does not comment on grant determinations.”

In the early months of the Trump administration…