Zachary Leiter

The Department of Health and Human Services building in Washington, D.C.

Since his inauguration in January, President Donald Trump has reshaped the role of the executive branch, especially in his efforts to scale back federal support for academic research.

Multiple federal agencies have cancelled grants, altered programs, and shifted funding commitments, and the newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has targeted what it argues is wasteful spending across the federal government.

The Maroon has compiled a timeline of federal funding cuts that the new administration has implemented and how they have affected the University of Chicago. 

January: Blanket Federal Funding Freeze

January 20: President Trump laid the groundwork for his administration’s reduction of federal funding commitments through his 26 Day One executive orders.

In one order, he established DOGE “to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity”; DOGE would later oversee cuts to federal spending and facilitate layoffs and dismantling of projects. In another executive order, titled “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing,” he directed the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to terminate any projects related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), which he termed “illegal and immoral discrimination programs.” Both orders established the justification for subsequent memos and budget proposals cutting funding and dismantling agencies inconsistent with the priorities of the administration.

January 27–30: Acting OMB Director Matthew Vaeth issued a memo announcing a federal funding freeze would take effect the following day, halting the disbursement of all federal grants and loans. In a unilateral attempt to shift federal spending priorities, the freeze would “identify and review all Federal financial assistance programs and supporting activities consistent with the President’s policies and requirements.” The freeze would affect hundreds of millions of dollars in funding the University receives each year.

In response to the memo, University Provost Katherine Baicker told faculty researchers in an email January 28 to “temporarily suspend their non-personnel spending on federal grants as much as possible during this period of substantial uncertainty.”

On January 29, the White House released a memo rescinding its previous January 27 memo. In response to the conflicting messages, Baicker told faculty in a second email sent on January 30 to “continue your research normally unless you’ve received direct communication otherwise from your funding agency.”

Federal District Judge John McConnell issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) on January 30 in response to a lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of 23 states, effectively halting the Trump administration’s grant freeze. McConnell later issued another ruling on February 11, directing the White House to comply with the order and reinstate any previously frozen funding.

February–March: NIH Cuts Funding and Cancels Grants; NSF Funding Threatened

February 7–11: The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s largest public funder of behavioral and biomedical research, imposed a 15 percent cap on indirect cost reimbursements, replacing previously negotiated rates that often exceeded 50 percent.

Alongside grants covering the direct costs of research, the NIH and other funding agencies typically award additional money to cover maintenance and administrative costs such as laboratory space, utilities, and personnel.

Within days, three lawsuits, filed by the attorneys general of 22 states, academic associations, and 12 institutions of higher education including UChicago, alleged that the new policies were “arbitrary and capricious” and would harm essential funds for “live-saving medical and scientific research.” According to UChicago’s lawsuit, the new cap would affect $52 million in University funding annually.

On February 10, District Judge Angel Kelley issued a nationwide TRO blocking the NIH from implementing the cap.

In an email sent on February 11, University President Paul Alivisatos told faculty that he authorized the University’s lawsuit because the NIH’s funding cuts “would immediately damage the ability of our faculty, students, and staff… to engage in health-related fundamental research and to discover life-saving therapies.”

“Following an election,” Alivisatos wrote, “policy changes are an expected part of our democracy. Yet today, some of these, if implemented, would have far-ranging adverse impacts on institutions of higher education and academic medical centers, including ours.”

February 11: An investigation led by U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz identified National Science Foundation (NSF) grants that it claimed “promoted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) or advanced neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda,” according to a press release at the time. Among the flagged awards were 18 grants to UChicago researchers.

The Maroon reached out to professors whose grants were flagged by the investigation. Most declined to speak on the record due to uncertainty about how the investigation might affect their work or due to fear of retaliation. The two professors who did speak asserted that their research had nothing to do with DEI.

One professor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told the Maroon they received an email from the University telling them “to cease preparing new experiments.”

March 5: Kelley issued a nationwide preliminary injunction blocking the NIH from enforcing its proposed 15 percent cap on indirect cost reimbursements. “[The] Court is hard pressed to think of a loss more irreparable than the loss of a life, let alone the thousands of people who are counting on clinical trials as their last hope,” she wrote.

Later that month, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) terminated six NIH grants, worth nearly $6 million, awarded to UChicago researchers. Included among the cuts were funding for research into HIV/AIDS, COVID-19, and health inequality.

In a statement, an NIH spokesperson told the Maroon that “NIH is taking action to terminate research funding that is not aligned with NIH and HHS priorities. We remain dedicated to restoring our agency to its tradition of upholding gold-standard, evidence-based science.” The spokesperson did not clarify why individual grants were terminated or why they were inconsistent with NIH and HHS priorities.

April–May: Humanities Grants Cancelled; Department of Energy and NSF Follow NIH Funding Cuts

April 4–11: The University Research Administration received notice that all active and upcoming grants to the University from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), totaling $3.1 million, would be terminated. One professor, whose research was affected and was paid through grant funding, told the Maroon in April, “The worst part of losing the grant was the fact that my colleague who was working out of Virginia—this was her only income.”

April 11: Following the NIH, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced that it would be limiting financial support of universities’ indirect research costs to 15 percent, claiming that the change would “generate over $405 million in annual cost savings for the American people.” The University’s new Energy Frontier Research Center and the Argonne National Laboratory both source funds from the DOE. The DOE’s Early Career Research Program also awards grants to some UChicago researchers.

April 14–16: The Association of American Universities, the American Council on Education, and the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities filed a lawsuit on April 14, seeking a TRO to block the DOE’s indirect cost cap.

In a statement issued in conjunction with the lawsuit, the organizations wrote that the cuts would have an “immediate and dire impact on critical energy, physical sciences and engineering research nationwide.”

A federal judge temporarily blocked the cost cap from taking effect on April 16.

May 2: The Trump administration released its 2026 fiscal year budget proposal, which called to dismantle the NEH. The president previously attempted to defund the NEH during his first term, but Congress rejected the plan. The budget proposal must receive congressional approval before taking effect.

Following the NIH and DOE, the NSF also advanced a proposal that would cap reimbursement for indirect research costs at 15 percent for new research awards, effective May 5. The NSF, which supports science and engineering related research, has been subject to stalled grant reviews and canceled grants, culminating with the agency informing staff members on April 30 to “stop awarding all funding actions until further notice.”

Unlike the NIH and DOE caps, the NSF cap would not apply retroactively and only affects awards disbursed after the new guidelines took effect.

May 5: UChicago jointly filed a lawsuit with three academic associations and 12 other institutions of higher education to halt the NSF’s proposed cap on indirect research cost reimbursements. No order has been issued so far in this case.

According to the suit, the cap would result in an annual loss of $14.5 million to UChicago’s research budget. The suit alleged the cap is unlawful for reasons similar to the NIH and DOE funding cuts, and that the NSF had “not even attempted to address” issues that the district court had found in previous indirect cost cap proposals.

May 9: District Court Judge Susan Illston issued a TRO on May 9 broadly blocking the Trump administration’s efforts to overhaul 21 government agencies, including the DOE and NSF. In her order, Illston wrote “courts must sometimes act to preserve the proper checks and balances between the three branches of government” after saying during a hearing that the order was needed “to protect the power of the legislative branch.”