Fed Update: COGR News Digest

Council on Governmental Relations (COGR)

4/2/25

How Researchers Could Get Their Canceled NIH Grants Back (Inside Higher Ed) .

The National Institutes of Health terminated numerous federal research grants that officials say no longer align with the agency’s priorities. But experts see multiple avenues to appeal the NIH’s decisions

4/2/25Inside Higher Ed

  Public Health Agencies See Mass Layoffs

The Department of Health and Human Services laid off thousands of employees Tuesday, including several senior leaders,  The Washington Post , the  Associated Press  and  other   outlets  reported. The layoffs hit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and other agencies at the department. All told, about 10,000 employees received notice of reductions in force, according to the Post, including “biomedical scientists, staff who respond to freedom of information requests and researchers who work to improve patient safety.”

4/2/25Inside Higher Ed

  Trump Freezes Princeton’s Federal Funding

The Trump administration froze about $210 million in federal funding to Princeton University on Tuesday, about half of the university’s total federal grants for this fiscal year, according to reports from  various   media   outlets .  The university confirmed Tuesday that officials had been notified that dozens of grants were suspended by several federal agencies, including NASA and the Departments of Defense and Energy. In a campuswide email sent Tuesday, Princeton president Christopher Eisgruber said the agencies had provided no reasoning for the funding freeze and did not cite a specific dollar amount.

4/2/25Inside Higher Ed

  U of Washington Research Coordinators, Consultants Unionize

More than 700 University of Washington research coordinators and consultants have unionized, joining already organized research scientists and engineers there to create a bargaining unit more than 2,000 members strong, the union announced.

4/1/25The Chronicle, Opinion

  Trump’s Illegal War on the University of Pennsylvania

The Trump administration began stage two of its campaign against academe on March 19, when it announced on X that it  had frozen $175 million in federal funding  to the University of Pennsylvania because the university had allowed a transgender athlete, Lia Thomas, to join the women’s swim team in 2022. The announcement stated, “President Trump has promised to protect female athletes. He has threatened to rip federal funding away from any university that defies his executive order banning biological males from infiltrating women’s sports. And he is doing it.”

4/1/25CNN

  23 states, DC sue Trump administration over billions in lost public health funding

Democratic attorneys general and governors in 23 states and Washington, DC, have  filed a lawsuit  against the US Department of Health and Human Services and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., alleging that the department’s sudden rollback of $12 billion in public health funding was unlawful and harmful.

4/1/25

  Trump Administration Cancels NIH Scientific Integrity Policy (Scientific American) .

The policy was rescinded Friday evening to “ensure alignment with the administration’s priorities,” according to a  notice posted by NIH . The notice says NIH, which is the largest source of funding for medical research in the world, will now follow the Department of Health and Human Services' broader scientific integrity policy

3/31/25New York Times

  Trump Administration Will Review Billions in Funding for Harvard

The move follows the cancellation of roughly $400 million in funding for Columbia and the suspension of $175 million for the University of Pennsylvania

3/31/25Science

  NSF has awarded almost 50% fewer grants since Trump took office

The number of new grants handed out by the National Science Foundation (NSF) since President Donald Trump took office has fallen by nearly 50% compared with the same 2-month period 1 year ago. The drop-off—which has reduced the funds awarded to researchers by more than $400 million—is even steeper for engineering, education, and computing sciences, as well as NSF’s new technology directorate.

3/31/25Science

  International scientists rethink U.S. conference attendance

Marco Prado has rarely missed a meeting of the International Society for Neurochemistry in 30 years. … “It’s like our neighbor is trying to attack us. … I cannot [bring] myself morally to spend Canadian taxpayers’ money in attending U.S. conferences,” he says.

3/28/25PBS News

  How U.S. colleges are navigating cuts to grants for research after Trump restricts federal funding

For most of the schools, around 10% to 13% of their revenue came from federal contracts or research funding, according to the analysis. For some prestigious research universities, however, federal money represented up to half of their revenue

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