STAT+: Trump administration orders NIH to eliminate $2.6 billion in federal contracts
At a chaotic time, the NIH is given a deadline of April 8 to make a 35% cut in services that may include specimen storage, genetic counseling, administration.
Leaders at the National Institutes of Health have been meeting this week to figure out how to cut $2.6 billion in contracts from the biomedical research agency’s budget, according to three people familiar with the matter and internal emails obtained by STAT.
Early last week, the Trump administration’s federal government-shrinking task force, known as the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, directed the NIH to reduce contract spending across each of its 27 institutes and centers by roughly 35 percent. The NIH was told to comply by April 8, according to the emails obtained by STAT.
The cuts are likely to further paralyze an agency that on Tuesday lost 1,200 employees, including the directors of five institutes and the heads of several labs, and has had key grantmaking, research training, and science communication functions severely limited since Trump’s return to the White House.
