The Trump administration has knocked on the doors of the U.S. Supreme Court once again—this time with a plea to let it slash hundreds of millions in scientific research grants tied to diversity and equity. At the center of this legal clash: the National Institutes of Health and its now-frozen funding streams.
In a Thursday filing, the administration urged the justices to overturn a federal judge’s order that blocked the grant cuts and forced the NIH to keep distributing nearly \$800 million, primarily aimed at biomedical projects that touched on diversity, gender identity, or equity-related themes. That order came out of Massachusetts, where a coalition of researchers and 16 Democratic-leaning states challenged the funding shutdown as unlawful.
The NIH, often described as the world’s largest backer of medical science, became a sudden target in Trump’s second-term efforts to root out what he calls “ideological overreach”—a war on DEI, transgender health programs, and any hint of progressivism within federal institutions. The administration argues the cuts are a legitimate reorientation of policy. The courts so far have disagreed.
Judge William Young, a Reagan-era appointee, was blunt in his June ruling: the administration’s moves weren’t just unlawful—they were chaotic, ideologically driven, and devoid of any substantive justification. He said the government offered no consistent definition of DEI, no real criteria for deciding which projects were “low value,” and no evidence for sweeping accusations that NIH was enabling racial discrimination through its funding.
“Breathtakingly arbitrary and capricious,” Young wrote of the administration’s actions.
Two lawsuits prompted the freeze—one from the American Public Health Association and a group of scientists, the other from a bloc of mostly blue-state attorneys general. Both described the cuts as a purge of politically disfavored research, couched in vague rhetoric about rooting out bias and inefficiency.
Meanwhile, inside NIH, dissent is growing louder. Dozens of staff, scientists, and medical professionals signed a letter denouncing the cuts and warning they could derail crucial research, both in the U.S. and globally.
Despite the court’s rebuke, the administration has continued its legal maneuvers. After the First Circuit Court of Appeals refused to pause Judge Young’s ruling, officials went straight to the Supreme Court, which has proven a friendly venue in previous Trump-era clashes. With its solid conservative majority, the court has sided with Trump on nearly every major case since his return to office.
The administration is also attempting a procedural detour—arguing that this lawsuit never belonged in a district court in the first place, but rather in the Court of Federal Claims, which handles financial disputes with the government. That very argument helped the administration win a similar DEI-related case earlier this year, when the justices allowed cuts to teacher training grants to go forward.
Whether that same tactic works here remains to be seen. For now, the NIH’s budget remains in limbo—and so does the fate of thousands of researchers whose work hangs on Washington’s ideological tug-of-war.
