STAT+: NIH halts grant terminations ‘effective immediately,’ email says
The National Institutes of Health is halting further terminations of research grants, an internal email shows
Days after a federal judge ordered the restoration of more than a thousand biomedical research grants, the National Institutes of Health is halting further terminations of grants, an internal email shows.
Since President Trump’s inauguration in January, the nation’s largest biomedical research funder has terminated an unprecedented number of research grants. The email obtained by STAT does not state the reason for the decision, but it came a week after a federal judge in Boston ruled that some of the terminations were “void and illegal” — and just hours after the judge refused the administration’s request to pause his order.
The email, sent Tuesday afternoon by Michelle Bulls, director of the Office of Policy for Extramural Research Administration, suggests more grants were in the queue for termination. It reads: “Effective immediately, please do not terminate any additional grant projects. Please unrelease all grant projects that are in the cue to be terminated. Again, do not terminate any additional grant projects.”
