Concerns are rising among researchers that President Donald Trump’s administration is finding new ways to shrink the U.S. biomedical research enterprise even as the White House’s request to cut the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) budget by 40% in 2026 meets resistance in Congress.
One worry is a new policy requiring that NIH fund multiyear grants with a single, upfront lump sum, rather than year by year. The shift is already sharply lowering the odds a scientist’s proposal will succeed; at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), for example, it has fallen from one in 10 grant applicants to one in 25. The policy could force the closure of many university labs, NIH staff and agency onlookers predict.
The second worry was fueled on Sunday when White House budget chief Russell Vought acknowledged during a TV interview that his office is slowing NIH spending with additional assessments of already peer-reviewed grants. He also hinted that the agency could be included in a request to Congress to take back unspent NIH funds.
