NIH Stops Terminating Grants, Perhaps Temporarily

Senior official Michelle Bulls at the National Institutes of Health to “not terminate any additional grant projects,” which applies to “all grant projects that are in the [queue] to be terminated” for political reasons.

On 23 June 2025, NIH and its parent Department of Health and Human Services filed an appeal of the 16 June order by federal District Court Judge William Young for immediate reinstatement of an estimated 900 grants obviously canceled for political reasons. Their topics included health disparities by race, transgender health, and vaccine hesitancy.

NIH and DHS wanted Young to stay his ruling while their appeal proceeds because his ruling would “result in millions of dollars irrevocably flowing out of the U.S. Treasury.”

Young declined the request for a stay. He said he only requires the agencies to comply with Congressional appropriations “rather than sequestering funds (probably forever) during the course of the appeal.”

NIH employees have not yet begun to reinstate the grants to which Young’s ruling applies, let alone an additional 1400 to organizations other than the plaintiffs in the two cases before Young. They have only been told not to cut off any more.

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