Update: Judge grants temporary restraining order blocking the cuts.
Massachusetts and 21 other states today sued the federal government over its plans to slash funding for National Institutes of Health grants, including money the government had already agreed to pay out.
This agency action will result in layoffs, suspension of clinical trials, disruption of ongoing research programs, and laboratory closures. As the Guidance acknowledges, NIH's work and the institutions that NIH supports serve to "enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability." NIH's extraordinary attempt to disrupt all existing and future grants not only poses an immediate threat to the nation's research infrastructure, but will also have a long-lasting impact on its research capabilities and its ability to provide life-saving breakthroughs in scientific research.
At issue are not funds paid directly to researchers at universities, hospitals and other non-profits facilities, but the "indirect costs" that the government has long agree to pay to help the institutions literally put a roof over researchers heads - including fund already agreed to by the government.
Or as Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell and her counterparts in 21 other states put it in their suit, filed in US District Court in Boston:
Indirect costs may include expenses such as building construction and maintenance, utilities, laboratory equipment, and cleaning costs. Indirect costs may also include research administration, which includes the work of safety and regulatory committees that are mandated by the federal government for certain research programs, as well as other support staff whose services apply to multiple research projects. In addition, indirect costs may include equipment necessary to comply with specialized ventilation requirements, or research quarters and facilities suitable for optimizing biosafety and radiation safety.
Indirect costs are just as vital as direct costs because they likewise cover necessary costs for research projects. Indirect costs are an essential part of the cost of scientific progress and medical advances.
Indirect costs are vital to conducting research that advances American stature in international technological advancement, medical research, and life-saving technologies. They support the fundamental expense of simply providing a location and staff to facilitate the research that would otherwise not be funded through direct costs.
For example, a university which is funded to conduct cancer therapy research also must fund the physical maintenance of a laboratory and pay for the staff who manage the laboratory and lab equipment, such as operational staff who are not themselves researchers.
The suit charges the federal declaration is "arbitrary and capricious" because it rescinds money already approved, violates the will of Congress in determining how to spend federal research dollars and gives no rationale for reducing the maximum indirect costs per grant to 15%. Plus, the sudden change violates federal rules letting people comment on proposed changes to those rules.
In Massachusetts, the suit charges, the state's universities, hospitals and research centers would immediately lose some $1 billion in funding. The suit discusses UMass specifically, including:
For UMass Chan Medical School, NIH's reduction of the indirect cost rate will eliminate approximately $40 to $50 million dollars in funding that UMass Chan Medical School uses to support its research programs. The loss of these funds will immediately impact UMass Chan Medical School's ability to draw critical funds used to pay expenses associated with utilities and basic maintenance on the operational research facilities, debt service, payroll, and other infrastructure associated with UMass Chan Medical School's research and clinical trials.
In addition to a permanent ban on the funding cuts, the states are seeking a temporary injunction to block it while their case wends through the courts.
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Comments
I guess the other 29 states...
By necturus
Mon, 02/10/2025 - 1:57pm
...don't host any research, and therefore don't care.
Or their AGs don't care
By BostonDog
Mon, 02/10/2025 - 4:26pm
Abruptly pulling back on grants like this hurts everyone in the US. And yes, there are groups affected in every state.
Make no mistake: Musk and Trump are not planning to cut overall spending. They'd just rather federal dollars go to private companies and citizens (Musk himself) instead of non-profits that spread the money further.Â
Instead of cancer research and environmental studies that help everyone, we get to fund goons roughing up immigrants and double down on Musk's business ventures. Why spend money on AIDS drugs and food for impoverished people when you can give the ultraweathy more tax breaks?
They aren't being libertarians, they just want to enlarge their bank accounts while forcing people to follow their world views. (AKA, White Christian men of European decedent have privileges over everyone else.)
Or their institutions already get the 15% indirect rate or less
By ScottB
Mon, 02/10/2025 - 5:24pm
So the proposed change doesn't affect them. The average indirect rate is 27-28% but Harvard's, for example, is 69% according to the campus paper. There have got to be a lot of grants with lower overhead rates to average that out since Harvard gets quite a bit of NIH money.
I suspect the primary hidden motive for the change is the fact that the highest overhead rates tend to be at left-leaning research institutions in blue states/cities.
And FWIW the NIH presumably gets an allocation of a certain number of dollars from the Congress to expend on research grants and overhead. The more that gets spent as overhead, the less there is available for grants -- unless the budget item has some specific allowance for overhead.
The overhead isn't wasted money
By BostonDog
Mon, 02/10/2025 - 6:00pm
Harvard and MIT have resources that smaller places lack, in part because all that funding is pooled and added up over time. The overhead is lab spaces and support staff and everything else needed to run a large study beyond just materials. And it's certainly the case they are doing this to hurt what they see as their political opponents. (Nevermind the fact Harvard graduates plenty of conservatives.)
But the more important part is that the government is suddenly ending payments after having signed contracts. You can argue that the funds shouldn't have been granted in the first place but once the grant is issued and the research started, abruptly withdrawing it is illegal and ethically wrong.Â
BTW, Musk & Trump aren't arguing that the money can go further elsewhere, they are saying they want no more science and health research at all. That is what people should truly find disgusting. While Trump and friends dislikes science overall, they love Darwin.
Â
Not Darwin
By perruptor
Mon, 02/10/2025 - 11:31pm
They love survival of the fattest. That has nothing to do with Darwin .
Curious if Alabama is part of the lawsuit
By spin_o_rama
Mon, 02/10/2025 - 3:00pm
https://www.al.com/news/2025/02/katie-britt-vows-to-work-with-rfk-jr-aft...
For some, it might the face-eating stage of voting for the Face Eating Leopard Party.
President Musk
By J.R. Dobbs
Mon, 02/10/2025 - 3:28pm
Is already ignoring Federal Judges orders and has directed Trump to keep the spending freeze.
We're a week into a Constitutional Crisis and nobody really seems to gaf.
Umass crying poor
By anon
Mon, 02/10/2025 - 3:49pm
Is hysterical given the average salary of its employees. Umass tops the list both for current employee compensation and pension payments.
Let look at the highest compensated Indvidual's in all state agencies for 2024.
Martina Francisco - $1.8M - Umass Basketball
Mike Collins - $1.6M - Umass Chancellor & SVP Hlth Sciences
Terence Flotte - $1.15 - Umass Exec Dep Chanc Provost & Dean
Donald Brown - $950K - Umass Football
Partha Chakrabarti - $868K - Umass Exec VC Innovation & Bus Devel
Martin Meehan - $838K - Umass President
Ray Bamford - $726K - Umass Athletic Director
John Lindstedt - $679K - Umass Exec VC, Admin & Finance
Lisa Colombo - $665K - Umass Exec VC, ForHealth Consulting
Javier Reyes - $658K - Umass Chancellor
TEN FOR TEN!
Data - https://cthrupayroll.mass.gov/#!/year/2024/full_time_employees,others/pa...
Then were paying people $300K pensions which i didnt think pension were supposed to build wealth, i always assumed they were so people could afford to live in retirement.
Does musk truly believe his money can save him
By hydeparkish
Mon, 02/10/2025 - 7:18pm
And he doesn't need scientific research OR is he working on a private research venture to help cure cancer OR are Russia and China about to overtake scientific research that Musk is going to get a financial benefit from?
Trump absolutely might just wanna punish democratic cities where he lost the popular vote?!
Yes
By lbb
Tue, 02/11/2025 - 9:48am
Yes, he rather does. He's an arrogant little techbro narcissist. If you've worked in tech, you know them: the dudes who assume that they are naturally talented at anything they want to do, without effort or study. Every tech workplace is infested with them. Far from being geniuses and innovators, they are a drain on innovation and productivity. Yes, Musk truly believes that with enough money, he can go to Mars and escape the consequences of his actions here on earth.
What part of "net payer"
By Will LaTulippe
Mon, 02/10/2025 - 11:31pm
Isn't clear to the regime in DC? Why does Massachusetts need a grant? That's just money going from MA to DC back to MA.
Sounds like MA residents should stop having federal taxes deducted from their paychecks. If the feds want to come make an arrest, local cops can be instructed to not help like they're ICE.
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