In the wake of two court rulings taking issue with the axing of medical research grants by the Trump administration, a senior official at the National Institutes of Health has directed agency staff members not to cancel any additional research projects, at least for now.
The directive, in an internal memo sent Tuesday and reviewed by The New York Times, is a retreat by the agency. Since President Trump’s return to office, N.I.H. has slashed funding for medical research by ending hundreds of awards, part of his administration’s broader effort to end the use of public money on diversity issues and the health of sexual and gender minority groups.
It was not clear how long the directive would hold.
Neither the N.I.H. — which has also been accused of slow-walking funding to other projects by subjecting them to heavier scrutiny by political appointees — nor its parent agency, the Health and Human Services Department, responded to a request for comment on Wednesday.
The memo was sent by Michelle Bulls, who helps oversee the agency’s external funding arm. “Effective immediately, please do not terminate any additional grant projects,” she wrote. The memo also instructed staff members to pause the cancellation of grants that were in the queue to be “terminated.”
A federal judge in Massachusetts last week declared some of the Trump administration’s grant cancellations “void and illegal” and accused the government of racial discrimination and prejudice against L.G.B.T.Q. individuals. The judge ordered the government to restore much of that funding for now, pending an appeal.
On Monday, a federal judge in California temporarily blocked the administration from canceling grants to the University of California. The judge said the termination of grants on “forbidden topics” like diversity, equity and inclusion violated the First Amendment.
It was not immediately clear whether the N.I.H. had reinstated the grants at the center of those rulings. The health department said last week that it would explore whether to appeal the Massachusetts ruling.
In the meantime, N.I.H. officials said they were continuing to categorize medical research grants based on whether they included topics disfavored by the Trump administration, even if they were not terminating those grants.
Benjamin Mueller reports on health and medicine. He was previously a U.K. correspondent in London and a police reporter in New York.
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