Trump didn't 'cancel cancer research,' but new NIH guidance cut funding for some medical studies

As U.S. President Donald Trump began his second term, directives his administration imposed on government agencies whose mission it is to promote health and research fueled rumors that he had defunded cancer research. While that wasn't exactly true, his new guidance did effectively end funding for some medical research. 

For example, the day after Trump spoke before Congress on March 4, 2025, one user posted on X that the president had "stopped child cancer research" (archived): 

Those claims had been spreading for weeks. Someone else had posted (archived) on X on Jan. 22, 2025, that stopping cancer research would be "sociopathic": 

Further, Snopes readers had searched on our site whether it was true that Trump had stopped cancer research. Meanwhile on X, a user posted (archived) that one of their friends, who had skin cancer, was about to start a clinical trial after other treatments had failed, and the trial had now been canceled:

A GoFundMe page for the skin cancer patient claimed:

All my appointments at MD Anderson for next week have been canceled. This as a result from the new White House administration's decision to temporarily halt funding for medical research, This also applies to clinical trials, like the one I was scheduled to start soon.

Another variation of the claim appeared on Facebook and Reddit, alleging Trump had shut down "the majority of research funding."

The claim followed reports that meetings of researchers at the National Institutes of Health had been canceled. In these meetings, known as review-panel or study-section meetings and advisory councils, experts of any given discipline get together to decide which research projects will receive grants from the agency. These meetings are often scheduled a year in advance, with sometimes dozens of participants, which means they can be difficult to reschedule. Canceling these meetings without rescheduling them can result in a research funding freeze.

Indeed, meeting cancellations began after a memo from the Department of Health and Human Services that ordered a freeze on all communications (including meetings) and reports from health agencies, including the NIH, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, until a presidential appointee could review them:

Refrain from publicly issuing any documents (e.g., regulation, guidance, notice, grant announcement) or communication (e.g., social media, websites, press releases, and communication using listservs) until it has been reviewed and approved by a presidential appointee," through February 1.

In short, the Trump administration did pause those meetings until an appointee could review them, until at least Feb. 1, 2025. At the time, the Senate had not yet confirmed Trump's appointee for health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for the White House replied:

HHS has issued a pause on mass communications and public appearances that are not directly related to emergencies or critical to preserving health. This is a short pause to allow the new team to set up a process for review and prioritization. There are exceptions for announcements that HHS divisions believe are mission critical, but they will be made on a case by case basis.

We contacted the agency for more clarifications on the rationale behind the review panel meeting freeze, and we did not receive a response.

Communications and travel freezes

Communications freezes during presidential transitions have happened in the past, though the length of this pause was unprecedented. For example, for the first time since it started publishing it in 1961, the CDC failed to put out its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Indeed, a visit to its main page and a check of its past issues showed that it had been published every Thursday since at least 1982, except for Jan. 23 and Jan. 30, 2025.

As HHS ordered the communications freeze, a Jan. 22, 2025, email from Glenda Conroy, director of the NIH Office of Financial Management, ordered that all travel be "suspended" immediately and indefinitely. This travel ban affected all NIH-sponsored travel, including for professional meetings and conferences where many scientists were due to make presentations. 

But some grant-review meetings occurred over video, so the travel ban alone did not explain why grant meetings were halted.

Several people on social media platforms including Bluesky and Reddit made similar claims to the ones above. For example, a user posted on Bluesky on Jan. 22, 2025, an exchange in which people said review panel meetings had been abruptly ended as the members of the panel discussed grants:

(Bluesky / ‪@medickimw.bsky.social‬)

The posts read:

Original post: Colleague of mine just got back from zoom study section saying the SRO [scientific review officer] shut down the meeting while they were in the middle of discussing grants, saying some executive order wouldn't let them continue. l'm just wondering if anyone else has any info on this. At first it sounded like "diversity" initiatives might have been a factor, but now I'm wondering if there's a wider freeze. Any other tips out there?

Response: My colleague was in a virtual study section that was similarly shut down by the SRO (perhaps the same one, or this is a wider issue). Someone followed up via email that the SRO was a DEI hire and was placed on leave immediately today so the meeting had to end. This is bananas.

Science Magazine published a report on Jan. 22, 2025, according to which at least one meeting had been cut short and another had been canceled moments before it was due to start:

Today, for example, officials halted midstream a training workshop for junior scientists, called off a workshop on adolescent learning minutes before it was to begin, and canceled meetings of two advisory councils. Panels that were scheduled to review grant proposals also received eleventh-hour word that they wouldn't be meeting.

Scientists reported meeting cancellations

Further, several scientists who sat on panels confirmed directly that either the grant-review meetings or pre-meetings they were meant to attend had been canceled. For example, Erin Rich, an associate professor in neurology at New York University, posted on Bluesky:

(Bluesky / ‪@erinlrich.bsky.social)

Rich's assertion was confirmed by Luke Remage-Healy of the University of Massachusetts, in a reply:

(Bluesky / ‪@healeylab.bsky.social)

Esther Choo, an emergency physician from the Oregon Health & Science University, posted something similar on Jan. 22, 2025:

(Bluesky / ‪@choo.bsky.social)

Searching the calendar for study-section meetings on the NIH website, we found two different study-section meetings listed for January: one titled "Biobehavioral Medicine and Health Outcomes Study Section" and another titled "Cellular Signaling and Regulatory Systems Study Section." 

With an annual budget of $47 billion, the NIH is the world's largest funder of research in the medical and behavioral sciences. The cancellation or delay of study-section meetings, which dole out grant money to promising studies in those areas, worried scientists that crucial research may be delayed or abandoned for lack of funding.

For example, Chrystal Starbird, a cancer researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, posted on Bluesky on Jan. 22 that the study-section meeting in which she was supposed to take part had been canceled, with what she expected would be negative consequences on "critical cancer research":

(Bluesky / ‪‪@drstarbird.bsky.social‬)

In a direct message on Bluesky, Starbird told Snopes her meeting was scheduled to take place on Jan. 30 and 31, and that she had received no further information as to whether it might be rescheduled. The meeting was going to be virtual, requiring no travel.

However, the communications freeze was lifted partially on Feb. 26, 2025, after Kennedy was confirmed as health secretary. The pause had impacted 16,000 grants applications, or about $1.5 billion in NIH funding, according to an NPR report.

Funding freeze, cost cap, and federal court decisions

Meanwhile, on Jan. 27, 2025, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget issued a memo imposing a blanket freeze of "agency grant, loan, and other assistance programs" on all government agencies. This also impacted the NIH's ability to distribute grant money. Shortly after this, U.S. Federal Judge John McConnell, Jr., in Maryland, issued a temporary restraining order blocking the funding freeze. 

However, due to the freeze on communications, the government still withheld grant money weeks after the TRO. As the federal government failed to comply with the order, McConnell on Feb. 10, 2025, granted the plaintiffs' motion to enforce the TRO. Those plaintiffs included more than 20 states and the District of Columbia.

The States have presented evidence in this motion that the Defendants in some cases have continued to improperly freeze federal funds and refused to resume disbursement of appropriated federal funds.

[…]

The broad categorical and sweeping freeze of federal funds is, as the Court found, likely unconstitutional and has caused and continues to cause irreparable harm to a vast portion of this country. These pauses in funding violate the plain text of the TRO.

Separately, on Feb. 7, 2025, the NIH issued new guidance on indirect costs for grants. Published late on a Friday, the guidance capped such costs to 15% of the amount of the grants. According to a congressional research paper, "indirect costs represent expenses that are not specific to a research project and that maintain the infrastructure and administrative support for federally funded research." Effective the following Monday, Feb. 10, 2025, this cost cap would apply to all new grants, and also to all existing grants. According to the same paper, in 2023 indirect costs represented 27.8% of grants awarded, or $9.4 billion. A social media post by the NIH estimated that this new guidance would save the agency $4 billion a year (archived):

This near-halving of indirect costs might affect research that had already been receiving funding by the NIH. While a lump sum is awarded to a project upon approval, the money is often doled out once a year, upon review of an annual progress report. Research teams that had already negotiated grant amounts to carry our their work may have to slow or shutter their projects. 

In response, 22 states sued the federal government. On March 5, U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley in Massachusetts, granted their motion for a nationwide preliminary injunction on this indirect-cost cap. 

"The imminent risk of halting life-saving clinical trials, disrupting the development of innovative medical research and treatment, and shuttering of research facilities, without regard for current patient care, warranted the issuance of a nationwide temporary restraining order to maintain the status quo, until the matter could be fully addressed before the Court," Kelley wrote in the decision.

NIH implements new rules

Early in March 2025, the NIH began to implement changes. First, it reportedly instructed its staff to award grants only to applications that aligned with the administration's priorities, according to a report by Nature (archived). "NIH will no longer prioritize research and research training programs that focus on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)," an internal NIH document obtained by Nature read. This effectively terminated NIH-funded studies related to LGBTQ+ people, for example. 

Secondly, on March 6, the NIH announced it would centralize all grant reviews to the Center for Scientific Review "to improve efficiency and strengthen integrity." While 78% of grant applications go through the CSR, about 22% go through NIH Institutes and Centers. This is because some grant applications require specific expertise for review. Scientific review officers who organize such meetings need to have a deep understanding of the topic of research in order to recruit reviewers, for example. Further, the grant review schedules were different between the CSR and IC, so the existing system allowed NIH staff to spread the workload. 

For this and other reasons, scientists worried that the new system would slow grants, and therefore research projects. "Eighty percent of grants already go through CSR, but it would have to ramp up quickly," Choo of Oregon Health & Science University said in a direct message on Bluesky. "And so far all the admin has done is break processes, not improve them." 

Others expressed concern that centralizing all grant reviews might derail research for political goals. For example, someone said on Bluesky (archived):

(Bluesky / @altnih4science.bsky.social‬)

As for the claim that the pause had resulted in clinical trials being halted at MD Anderson, White House Director of Communications Steven Cheung replied that was false (archived):

Contacted by email, the cancer center in Texas replied that "all active and enrolling clinical trials at MD Anderson remain ongoing."