Fed Update: COGR News Digest » News & Announcements

7/21/25Inside Higher Ed

Congress Shows Resistance to Trump’s Plan to Slash Science Budgets

Congress’s proposed budgets would preserve more research spending than the president’s. It’s a rare rebuke from Republicans to the White House’s efforts to gut funding for several research support agencies.

The ChronicleSee also

DOD Again Blocked From Capping Indirect Rates on Research Grants

A group of universities again defeated the Defense Department’s 15% cap on indirect cost rates for government-funded research after a federal judge deemed the move arbitrary. Despite three earlier losses in similar cases, DOD announced a cap policy “that has consistently been deemed unlawful” without acknowledging its “apparent illegality” and without any attempt to structure the cuts in a legal manner, Judge Brian E. Murphy of the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts held July 18. Murphy issued a preliminary injunction against the cap.

7/21/25Associated Press

Harvard is hoping court rules Trump administration’s $2.6B research cuts were illegal

Harvard University will appear in federal court Monday to make the case that the Trump administration illegally cut $2.6 billion from the storied college — a pivotal moment in its battle against the federal government .

7/21/25Nature

How your research can survive a US federal grant termination

According to Grant Watch , a database tracking terminated grants from the NIH and the US National Science Foundation (NSF) — the country’s independent federal science-funding agency — more than 4,500 NIH grants awarded to US institutions have been terminated, representing some $6.1 billion of lost funding. And according to its 27 May account, a total of 1,752 grants, amounting to roughly $1.5 billion, had by then been terminated at the NSF

7/20/25The Atlantic

Trump’s ‘Gold Standard’ for Science Manufactures Doubt

Some of the tenets might be difficult to apply in practice—one can’t simply reproduce the results of studies on the health effects of climate disasters, for example, and funding is rarely available to replicate expensive studies. But these unremarkable principles hide a dramatic shift in the relationship between science and government.

7/20/25NPR

Trump administration shuts down EPA's scientific research arm

The Environmental Protection Agency is planning to shutter the agency's scientific research arm that provides expertise for environmental policies and regulations, as part of the Trump administration's continuing downsizing of the federal government.

7/18/25Bloomberg Law

NIH Ordered to Reinstate Grants While Litigation Continues (1)

The Trump administration’s attempt to halt the reinstatement of federal research grants linked to diversity, equity, and inclusion has been blocked by a federal appeals court. The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit’s Friday decision comes in Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s attempt to fend off legal challenges from Democratic-led states and interest groups over sprawling cuts to National Institutes of Health grants

7/18/25Science

Fearful of AI-generated grant proposals, NIH limits scientists to six applications per year

Scientists hoping to obtain some of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) dwindling research funds face a new challenge: They will be limited to submitting six applications per calendar year, according to a notice the agency released this week. The policy, which also prohibits applications written with the assistance of generative artificial intelligence, is ostensibly designed to prevent researchers from overwhelming the NIH grant-review system with large numbers of proposals, especially low-quality ones produced with AI

7/17/25Science

Senate panel raises hopes that NSF will restore killed grants

As part of a larger spending bill covering NSF and several agencies that was approved today by the Senate Committee on Appropriations, Republican leaders agreed to work with Senator Tammy Baldwin (D–WI) to refashion her failed amendment to restore funding for most of those grants. The revised amendment would then be voted on by the full Senate when it took up the entire $79 billion bill. The bill itself would give NSF $9 billion, only $60 million less than its current budget and $5.1 billion more than President Donald Trump has requested for the agency in the 2026 fiscal year that starts on 1 October

7/17/25Science, Editorial

Science philanthropy faces a new reality

s the ground under American science shifts in troubling and unpredictable ways, questions have arisen as to how philanthropies should respond. Having recently led a private foundation that supports science, I can say unequivocally that philanthropy could not fill a void left by draconian cuts in federal support. It can, however, continue to play a valuable role as a new reality unfolds