Federal judge expands block on Trump administration effort to cut public health funding

The Trump administration’s effort to cut back on federal funding for the National Institute of Health for research programs at universities and medical systems has been blocked nationwide.

The Trump administration’s effort to cut back on federal funding for the National Institutes of Health for research programs at universities and medical systems has been blocked nationwide. On Monday, lawyers representing dozens of research institutions told Judge Angel Kelley of the federal district court of Massachusetts that the change “will devastate critical public health research at universities and research institutions in the United States. Without relief from NIH’s action, these institutions’ cutting edge work to cure and treat human disease will grind to a halt.” Virtually the entire academic and medical communities across the country went to court seeking emergency help. In hundreds of pages of sworn statements, more than 30 medical system research directors and university leaders describe how research funding cutbacks would devastate their work and harm patients. One chemistry professor from the State University of New York who studies Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases wrote that the cost reduction by the NIH “will cost thousands of Americans their lives.” A second lawsuit — helmed by prominent conservative lawyer Paul Clement and other major attorneys — on Monday from American research universities also told the court the NIH cuts would “devastate medical research.”