- What happened: the 2025-2026 NIH termination wave
- Which grants and research topics were targeted
- Court-ordered restorations: the timeline
- Answer-first: common questions about NIH grant terminations
- Monitoring exposure: RePORTER, TAGGS, and tracker databases
- Implications for institutions, PIs, and research offices
What happened: the 2025-2026 NIH termination wave
Beginning in March 2025, the National Institutes of Health cancelled thousands of active research awards in one of the largest disruptions to federal biomedical funding in decades. A peer-reviewed analysis published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2026 counted 2,291 active NIH research grants terminated in the initial wave, withdrawing an estimated $2.45 billion in committed funding. NIH grant terminations continued through the spring, and by late May 2025 Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health researchers tracking the cuts put the cumulative total at roughly 2,100 grants worth approximately $9.5 billion.
Independent counts diverged because institutions and awarding offices reported figures at different points in a fast-moving process. The Association of American Medical Colleges recorded 777 terminated grants representing $1.9 billion as of 5 May 2025, while an implementation-science analysis published in PubMed Central counted 702 terminations as of 5 April 2025. The variance reflects the pace of the cuts rather than disagreement about their occurrence.
Which grants and research topics were targeted
Termination notices sent to grantees cited a shift in agency funding priorities away from topics the administration characterised as “unscientific” or as promoting discrimination. Research areas disproportionately affected included:
- LGBT+ health and gender-identity research
- Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the biomedical workforce
- Vaccine hesitancy and confidence studies
- Health equity and racial health-disparities research
- Climate change and environmental-health research
Reporting by Applied Clinical Trials Online found that 20% of terminated grants were early-career training awards, a category central to sustaining the biomedical research pipeline. A subsequent analysis found the cuts fell disproportionately on Black, Indigenous, and other minority researchers, as well as investigators from sexual and gender-minority communities — a pattern that later became central to the legal challenges against the terminations.
Court-ordered restorations: the timeline
Multiple lawsuits challenged the terminations as procedurally unlawful and discriminatory. The table below summarises the major rulings tracked through mid-2026.
| Date | Ruling / event | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| 16 June 2025 | Judge William Young (D. Mass.), APHA v. NIH | Ordered NIH to restore 367 grants worth nearly $3.8 billion; found the termination process “arbitrary and capricious” and discriminatory toward LGBTQ-related research |
| 25 June 2025 | NIH response to court order | NIH ceased issuing new terminations of “politically sensitive” grants while the ruling was contested |
| August 2025 | Federal court order, UCLA class action | Ordered restoration of NSF grants suspended at UCLA from 1 August 2025 |
| September 2025 | Federal court order, UCLA | Ordered restoration of NIH funding suspended at UCLA from 31 July 2025; NIH reinstated the awards |
| May 2026 | Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals | Upheld reinstatement of grants terminated under DEI- and environmental-justice-related executive orders, the first major appellate ruling on the issue |
The Department of Health and Human Services has pursued appeals against several of these rulings, so the restoration list is not static. Institutions should treat any given month’s figures as a snapshot rather than a final count.
Answer-first: common questions about NIH grant terminations
How many NIH grants have been terminated?
Counts vary by source and date because the terminations rolled out over several months. Published figures range from 702 grants in early April 2025 to 2,291 grants worth $2.45 billion in the fullest peer-reviewed accounting, published in PNAS in 2026.
Have any terminated NIH grants been restored?
Yes. A federal judge ordered 367 grants restored in June 2025 following the APHA v. NIH ruling, and separate court orders restored NIH and NSF funding to UCLA researchers later that year. In May 2026 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld further reinstatements.
How can a research office check if a specific NIH grant was terminated?
Research offices should cross-check award numbers against NIH RePORTER, the HHS TAGGS terminated-grants list, and USASpending.gov, then corroborate against the crowdsourced Grant Watch database, which aggregates termination notices submitted directly by affected principal investigators.
What is the Grant Watch database?
Grant Watch is an independent tracker built by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health researcher Scott Delaney and computational researcher Noam Ross, combining government data with crowdsourced submissions to document NIH and NSF grant terminations that agency reporting has not consistently disclosed.
Monitoring exposure: RePORTER, TAGGS, and tracker databases
For sponsored-programmes offices, the operational question is not just what happened nationally but which of an institution’s own awards are exposed. No single federal system currently gives a real-time, authoritative picture of terminations and restorations together, so offices need to triangulate across sources.
| Tool | Custodian | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| NIH RePORTER | National Institutes of Health | Authoritative award status, PI, institution, and funding history lookups |
| HHS TAGGS (terminated-grants list) | U.S. Department of Health and Human Services | Official, periodically updated PDF/CSV of terminated HHS awards by agency |
| USASpending.gov | U.S. Treasury / OMB | Government-wide obligation and de-obligation records across all federal awards |
| Grant Watch | Independent researcher-run project | Early, crowdsourced signal on terminations before official lists update |
A practical monitoring routine for a research office includes:
- Reconcile the institution’s active award list against NIH RePORTER monthly, flagging any status changes.
- Cross-check flagged awards against the HHS TAGGS terminated-grants file for confirmation of formal termination.
- Monitor Grant Watch and institutional legal counsel updates for early warning and litigation status, since court-ordered restorations can lag or precede official RePORTER updates.
- Maintain a standing register of affected PIs so restoration notices — which are sometimes issued quietly — are not missed.
Because restorations have followed litigation rather than routine agency process, research offices that rely solely on award letters risk missing reinstatements that require the institution to formally re-accept funding within a compliance window. Building this monitoring into research administration workflows, rather than treating it as a one-off compliance exercise, is now a standing requirement for institutions with federally funded portfolios.
Implications for institutions, PIs, and research offices
The termination-and-restoration cycle has practical consequences beyond the immediate funding gap. Institutions have had to decide whether to bridge-fund affected projects, hold staff and data-collection activities in limbo, or wind down studies that may later be reinstated. Early-career researchers, who held a disproportionate share of terminated training awards, face particular career risk from even temporary funding gaps.
The pattern of litigation-driven reinstatement also means compliance offices cannot treat a termination notice as final without checking litigation status — a departure from how terminations were historically administered. As appellate rulings such as the May 2026 Ninth Circuit decision accumulate, research offices should expect further reinstatements to arrive on a rolling basis rather than as a single resolution, making ongoing monitoring — not a one-time audit — the operationally necessary posture through the remainder of 2026.
