For U.S. medical researchers, shrinking labs and bare budgets are the new reality The Trump administration has slashed the number of grants from the National Institutes of Health, with far fewer focused on women, cancer and mental health.

Bhattacharya, Letai & other politicals at NIH keep trying to to say all at NIH is fine, because they spent the full budget last year. This well researched article from @carolynyjohnson.bsky.social explains exactly why many scientists are still struggling. www.washingtonpost.com/science/2026...

What I Saw Inside the Kennedy Center I spent 10 months working at the institution because I thought I could help protect it. What I observed there is far worse than the public knows.

Heartbreaking description of the pointless, thoughtless damage being done to the Kennedy Center. It was such an important part of life in Washington, and is now being destroyed for no reason

www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026...

Just watched the NIH Strategic Planning input session...

Some observations:

(1) I am glad that NIH is doing this (although I do remain skeptical about how seriously they will take input which challenges their existing intentions).

PEOPLE SHOULD STILL COMMENT!

grants.nih.gov/news-events/...

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Multiyear funding is more sustainable because as a result of this policy we will have way fewer scientists to sustain in the US! 🤡

Why are they doing this on the Administration's budget request instead of waiting for Congress to weigh in?

Here you go...

You can always check yourself at grant-witness.us/funding_curv...

CSR to continue the one-third triage cutoff for NIH grant review Some non-public information points to CSR continuing to triage grant applications at about the 33% line, instead of the traditional 50% line. This was originally put in place for the re-scheduled F…

CSR to continue the one-third triage cutoff for NIH grant review drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2026/04/06/c...

Getting an NIH grant, when money is released, is getting exponentially harder. You basically will need all three reviewers to score your grant as perfect to have a shot at funding.

I think we can be assured it is from the regime. Not the NSF serious people.

Way behind on issuing new awards

A line grant of the cumulative numbers of awards for NIH from fiscal years 2021-2026. The curve for fiscal year 2026 lies below the other curves.

NIH and NSF Updates (using graphs from grant-witness.us)

NIH all awards (New and Non-Competitive Renewal, Type 1 and Type 5, consistent with what is shown on NIH Reporter)

The flattening MAY be due to the lack of an OMB apportionment, which has now been remedied.

1/5

The President's fiscal year 2027 Budget was released today.

Important---Important---Important

The President's Budget is always fundamentally a political document that Congress may or may not (usually not) take very seriously.

www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...

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Hearing from #NIH sources the peer review office (CSR) is being broken.

"They [top of CSR] want ppl with zero expertise in the review area to run review. I heard they don't want people to be "distracted by the science." (??)
It's crazy to think a person can run good review for any kind of science."

Slightly tangential, but definitely related post From the Archive: drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2024/08/28/m...

Notification of the end of continuous submission and updating the late submission policy.

grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

Yep. See

grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

Not a huge deal but definitely a slap in the face.

Trump Administration Begins Inquiries Into 3 Medical Schools in Show of Power

A new assault on universities/medical schools

[Gift Link]

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/u...

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I don't think people fully appreciate how apocalyptic things are for US science. I haven't had any new funding since 2024, but I'm still ok since typical grants are for three years. This means next year I will be completely out of funding and will have to fire everyone in the lab. It's not great.

"Taking aim at the heart of scientific authority in the United States."
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/u...

Major conference catches illicit AI use — and rejects hundreds of papers The papers’ watermarks allowed organizers to detect use of large language models in peer review.

"If a researcher used an LLM to generate their peer review, instructions hidden in the watermark prompted the LLM to include telltale phrases in the review text. The presence of these phrases revealed that an AI model had been used to generate the review."

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

A few extra thoughts:

If you’ve had NIH funding through your career, think about how you’d feel if your 1st awarded proposal got a perfect score, and then was taken away mid-project.

Now think about being told that your career depends on these awards while success rates continue to collapse.

Clarification on New ACURO Requirement for DoD-Funded Animal Studies On October 1, the federal Animal Care and Use Review Office (ACURO), which provides regulatory oversight for Department of Defense (DoD) studies involving animals, announced that DoD-funded activities...

“DoD-funded activities can no longer be included on the same animal use protocol as research supported by other funding sources (e.g., the NIH, NSF, other federal or private grants, internal/pilot funds). “

animalcare.umich.edu/news/announc...

NIH grant cuts hit women, early-career scientists the hardest: analysis Last year’s funding cuts at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) disproportionately impacted women and early-career researchers, according to a | Last year’s funding cuts at the National Institutes...

Grant terminations had deep impacts on all early career scientists, running counter to Bhattacharya’s stated interest in supporting them.

The terminations disproportionately harmed early career women.
www.fiercebiotech.com/research/nih...

Are we surprised though?

I've seen a lot of demoralized posts (and emails) from people who didn't get into grad school this cycle.

This was one of the worst cycles I've ever seen due to massive cuts to research funding, financial difficulties at universities, and technological disruptions.

Provides some insights into what is happening (or rather what is not happening) with regard to federal science grant making.

It’s me!

Another interesting NIH data set.

NIH has posted the funding data by location (state, congressional district, organization) for fiscal year 2025.

report.nih.gov/award/index....

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A line graph of the number of NSF awards in fiscal 2026 compared to fiscal years 2021-2025. The fiscal year 2026 is well below the other curves and increasing only very slowly.

NSF Update through March 13, 2026

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I Wrote Research Funding Announcements for NIH for 22 Years. This Year They’ve Published 14 How NIH went from 756 funding announcements to 14 in two years — and what it means for every disease that depends on federal research

"This is about centralized control. About requiring that every research priority, every identified gap, every targeted funding decision be approved by political appointees rather than scientific program staff."

elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/i-wrote-re...