The duo tracking deep cuts to U.S. health research point out stories waiting to be told

The Wall Street Journal scooped a jaw-dropping story from a footnote in a Trump administration document last week: the National Institutes of Health had been ordered to halt funding for all research grants for the rest of the year.

So sharp and swift was the reaction in Congress, the NIH and some corners of the administration that the order was reversed right after the Journal published the story. Billions of dollars were allowed to flow again to study heart disease, cancer and more, the paper reported.

The episode underscores two things: the vulnerability of the nation’s entire health and medical research system in this fraught climate, and the power of great reporting to make a difference.

The situation was bad enough already. Earlier this year, the Trump administration abruptly cancelled funding the government had already committed to NIH-funded projects at universities, hospitals and labs across the country. Two scientists, Sean Delaney and Noam Ross, independently started tracking what was happening and then teamed up to create a database. Initially called Grant Watch, they recently renamed it Grant Witness. 

A volunteer effort, it’s a comprehensive account of the scale and scope of NIH grant freezes and terminations. It has become a go-to resource for journalists covering the assault on science, lawyers suing to stop it and scientists trying to win political and public support for continued investments in research. For example, the Science & Community Impacts Mapping Project (SCIMaP), created by an interdisciplinary team of researchers at several universities, has drawn on Grant Witness data to show how and where cuts in medical research hurt the economy and kill jobs.

Grant Witness has logged 4,564 grant freezes and terminations — $6.6 billion that had been promised but halted. The information comes from affected researchers, government releases, news reports and lawsuits. Ross and Delaney estimate they’ve captured 75% to 80% of the projects that lost funding. 

Grant Witness also tracks the terminations of National Science Foundation grants. Eight people, including the co-founders, work steadily on the project, often nights and weekends. Additional volunteers pitch in as they can.

“The cuts hit everywhere,” Delaney said. “It's not just in the Ivies. It's not just in the Northeast. There's a story everywhere across the entire country.”

I asked Delaney and Ross what stories journalists can mine from the data.  They ran through a list.

1. Targeting scientists, not just science

As has been widely reported, the administration’s first bullseye was on studies that that had anything to do with health disparities, transgender identity, race, vaccines, or any other topic the administration has denounced as “woke” or “DEI.”

But the administration has also aggressively cut grants “because of the researcher, not the topic,” Delaney said. One way this has happened is by eliminating targeted grants programs, for example, Diversity F31 awards for postdoctoral researchers from groups underrepresented in the biomedicine, health and social sciences workforce. These grants supported studies of any topic.

“People always think there has to be something else going on,” Delaney said. “And the answer is, no, we really are cutting grants because the person wasn't white.” 

A federal judge who ordered the reinstatement of hundreds of grants in June apparently agreed. In his ruling he said he “had never seen government racial discrimination like this” in his 40 years on the bench.

While certain groups bear the brunt of the cuts, they are not the only ones getting hammered. NIH has defined “underrepresented groups” broadly to include not only individuals of color, but also those with disabilities, and those from low-income families, poor rural communities and other “disadvantaged backgrounds.” NPR reported the cancellation of NIH grants that provided deaf students with scholarships, mentorship opportunities, sign language interpretation and other support to pursue doctorates and postdoctoral training.

Another casualty is U-RISE, Undergraduate Research Training Initiative for Student Enhancement, a program that has helped low-income, often first-generation college students prepare for graduate school and careers in science and medicine. 

Researchers from underrepresented groups, of course, don’t work solely on equity, race, gender and other issues the government now demonizes. Collectively, they study every medical and psychological condition any of us will ever suffer, and every aspect of our flawed health care delivery system.

“Alzheimer’s, cancer, HIV, AIDS,” Delaney said. “Parkinson’s, autism. Honestly, there isn't a domain of health that hasn't been hit.” 

2. Cuts locally and regionally. 

A lot of coverage of the NIH grant cancellations has focused on the national picture. Reading through the Grant Witness list of affected projects — and the detailed description accompanying every one of them — brings the stakes closer to home. In addition to segmenting data by hot-button issues (race, transgender communities, vaccine research and more), the database has tabs for “minority-serving institutions” and rural institutions. A local reporter in almost any community can find researchers and programs impacted in their broader coverage area. 

“If there's anybody on those beats in those places that can dig into this and tell the local stories, I think that that's going to help the public understand the scope of what’s getting cut better than they do right now,” Delaney said.

3. The war on equity. 

Delaney and Ross said reporters covering the cuts have sometimes looked for examples of white researchers working on cancer, heart disease or other uncontroversial topics — “the perfect thing that has been killed for no good reason,” Ross said. But shying away from covering stories of the thorough dismantling of work on racial disparities and health equity is a disservice. 

The wealthiest people in the U.S. are among the healthiest people on the planet, yet the country lags behind most of the industrialized world on life expectancy, heart disease deaths, maternal mortality and other health indicators marked by huge racial gaps. By wiping out research that touches on “DEI,” the government is undermining any hope of progress on some of the most significant medical challenges facing the country, Ross said. 

Ross is a computational scientist and executive director of rOpenSci, a nonprofit platform for shared, accessible software tools. Delaney works on a research team at Harvard studying the effects of air pollution and extreme heat on people with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. The federal grant supporting his work was cancelled in April. Without that support his university job is slated to end in October. 

Meanwhile, the Grant Witness team is sprinting to keep up with the constantly changing funding landscape.

After a federal judge in June ordered the administration to release hundreds of cancelled NIH grants represented in lawsuits filed by 16 states — for the most part, blue ones — and a coalition of groups led by the American Public Health Association, Grant Witness started tracking reinstatements.  An appeals court upheld the ruling.  The Trump administration filed an emergency application to the Supreme Court in late July, asking to proceed with the cutoffs.

No matter how this legal battle turns out, the future of health and medical research has never been more uncertain.

The Trump administration has proposed a 40% cut in the NIH budget for fiscal year 2026.  Last Thursday, the Senate Appropriations Committee rejected that plan and endorsed a $400 million increase for NIH. It’s an encouraging step in a process sure to see more wrangling and political horse-trading before the Sept. 30 deadline.

Go deeper on this issue 

“Deep staff cuts at a little-known federal agency pose trouble for droves of local health programs.” By Sarah Jane Tribble and Henry Larweh, KFF Health News, July 31, 2025

“Trump cuts to National Institutes of Health took more than $100M out of Pa. economy, according to local researcher.” By Alan Yu, WHYY, July 30, 2025

“New analysis predicts sprawling effects of proposed NIH budget cuts.” By Anil Oza, STAT, July 28, 2025