The lawsuits began to pile up on Monday in an attempt to halt the abrupt National Institutes of Health decision before the weekend to cap indirect costs at 15 percent, a move that would severely damage the entire research enterprise in the country. A consortium of universities and related associations filed soon after a group of 22 states’ attorneys general, both citing a specific Congressional move back in 2018 to limit the executive branch’s ability to do exactly what they are now doing. Later on in the day, a judge granted a temporary restraining order, requiring that funds continue to be disbursed as before.
Notably absent from the states’ lawsuit was, well, most of the red states in the country — and the judge’s restraining order does not include them. Red state AGs don’t seem as concerned, but the leaders of large universities and medical centers inside those states, which rely on the NIH funding just like those in blue states, certainly are.
“If this policy change is enacted, it will impact the way we do research at the University of Kentucky. It will cost UK tens of millions of dollars annually and will hit our local and state economies,” wrote UK president Eli Capilouto, in an email to the university community viewed by Splinter. The indirect costs cut, he wrote, “will impact the work we do to advance the health of Kentucky in those areas most critical to our future—including cancer, heart disease, children’s health, Alzheimer’s and opioid use disorder.”
The list of R1 universities, those considered to have “very high research activity” and which in general provide thousands of jobs as well as critical medical care, is littered with deep red locales. From Baylor to Florida State to Clemson to Ohio State, these are enormous places that will lose tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in research support under this move. Jobs will disappear, labs will close, trials will stop, drugs will go undiscovered, patients will die.
The universities and medical centers themselves understand this quite well. An email from leadership of the UT Southwestern Medical Center and Medical School in Dallas said they are “exploring all avenues for communicating the impact of this reduction on the vitality of biomedical research…. The most significant long-term impact of this policy will be on the patients who depend on the discoveries made in our institution and others, ultimately leading to better treatments and cures.”
There were some Trump-voting states that ended up on Monday’s lawsuit, including Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina. Some of those have Democratic governors, like North Carolina, which also has an enormous research enterprise accounting for huge chunks of its economy at places like Duke and UNC. Politicians in other red states, like Senator Katie Britt of Alabama, have also expressed some concern over the move, though their AG seems content at the moment to let the blue states mount the defense.
“I’m very disappointed Utah wasn’t part of the lawsuit today, but not unexpected unfortunately,” a researcher at the University of Utah told Splinter, adding that university leadership was trying to be transparent with its staff and faculty without a lot of extra information to go on. “I’m extremely worried about research staff and other people who are key to keeping science going who are going to bear the brunt of this.”
Leadership at other universities in Trump-voting states is trying to make their own staff, and likely by extension the public and state- and federal-level politicians, understand what it is they are proposing. An email from the dean of Penn State’s medical school to the community said the 15 percent indirect costs cap would have cost the whole school $35.2 million last year, about $17 million of which went to the medical school, and they would expect similar numbers this year. “This proposed change… represents a significant shift in funding policy and would have substantial implications for our ability to support federally funded research,” the email read. Another from leadership at the University of Iowa read: Simply put, the federal government provides reimbursement for real costs that are incurred in the process of safely and securely conducting high-impact research. This research has tangible benefits for the lives of Iowans.”
Meanwhile, even with the judge’s temporary restraining order supposedly in effect immediately, others including Judd Legum and Noel Sims at Popular Information have reported that the Trump administration is maintaining an overall funding freeze at NIH, in direct defiance of two federal court orders. The judge’s order to halt the indirect costs change included a requirement that the defendants at NIH file a status report within 24 hours and then ever two weeks, ostensibly to prove that the money is flowing as it should, if only to the plaintiff states — the judges, wisely, do not trust that the administration is complying with the law and want proof. A hearing in the case is scheduled for February 21, and meanwhile the red state universities seem eager to fight, even if their state governments largely don’t.
“We will, as I have communicated before, comply with all federal and state laws and policies,” read the University of Kentucky president’s email. “At the same time, we will forcefully advocate for what we do and our vital mission to advance this state — particularly its health.”
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