NIH violated federal law in withholding $8B grant funding, watchdog says
President Donald Trump’s administration violated federal law when it ordered the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to cancel $8 billion in grants intended for research, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) wrote in a new report.
According to the GAO—a nonpartisan, independent agency that monitors government activity—the NIH canceled more than 1,800 grants after Trump issued multiple executive orders barring the federal government from participating in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
To comply, the NIH pulled money from institutions researching anything related to identity factors such as race and gender, with little regard to quality. The GAO said the agency was in violation of the Impoundment Control Act in doing so, a law that limits the ability of the president to delay or cancel funding for programs approved by Congress.
NIH operations were funded by Congress prior to the election of Trump, who issued his executive orders shortly after taking office in January of 2025. Trump’s order gave federal agencies 60 days to comply by ensuring all DEI programs were eliminated and unsupported.
According to the GAO, after the NIH opted to pull funding, the agency was ordered to effectively cease all activities related to reviewing and funding grants, until the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had a chance to ensure any process for effectuating the release of grant funds aligned with Trump’s agenda.
This effectively put NIH research on ice for two months, the watchdog group added.
“NIH’s actions to carry out these executive directives, coupled with publicly available data showing a decline in NIH’s obligations and expenditures, establishes that the NIH intended to withhold budget authority from obligation and expenditure without regard to the process provided by the Impoundment Control Act,” the agency wrote in its Aug. 5 report, adding that while the Trump administration did lift the moratorium, it is still not clear that grants are being selected and funded as normal.
Further, the GAO said the NIH has never submitted a legally required “special message” to Congress that would argue a justification for federal funding to research grants being halted.
According to the GAO, while the NIH did obligate about $12.8 billion for grant awards so far in 2025, that’s still $8 billion less than the amount awarded by the same time in 2024, constituting a 62% decrease.
The full report and all findings are available here.
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