Trump Administration Moves to Slash NIH Funding by 40%, Threatening Collapse of American Biomedical Research

Proposed NIH budget cuts

A leaked HHS proposal dated April 10 would cut the NIH budget from roughly $47–48 billion to about $27 billion, about a 40% reduction, and consolidate the agency from 27 institutes and centers into eight, a restructuring first flagged in press reports and shared publicly by MedPage Today’s editor-in-chief.

The draft, circulated within HHS and described in coverage of the leak, is not a final administration budget and would still require submission by the President and negotiation and approval by Congress.

The documents and reporting emphasize both the scale of the fiscal hit and the organizational shakeup proposed for the nation’s primary biomedical science funder.

Proposed NIH reorganization

MedPage Today supplies the most specific program-level changes in a leaked draft.

The draft would eliminate four entities entirely: the National Institute of Nursing Research, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, the Fogarty International Center, and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities.

Three institutes would remain unchanged: the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the National Institute on Aging.

The draft proposes moving units such as NCATS and ARPA-H under a newly created Assistant Secretary for Innovation and relocating the NIEHS under a proposed Administration for a Healthy America–Environmental Health construct.

These shifts reflect an aggressive reorganization of where translational, environmental, and innovation-focused programs would sit.

Consequences of NIH cuts

Experts and critics quoted or summarized in the coverage warn the cut and reorganization would have severe consequences.

Joshua Gordon, former NIMH director, is cited warning a 40% reduction would force massive layoffs, undermine U.S. biomedical competitiveness—especially as China increases investment—and trigger cascading economic and scientific downstream harms.

Commentators also note potential legal and congressional roadblocks because some NIH institutes were established by statute, making consolidation legally and politically fraught.

MedPage Today's reporting on mass HHS layoffs and the ongoing policy maneuvers around indirect cost rates frames the proposal as part of a broader move to shrink federal research support and administrative protections.

Procedural and political limits

The reporting also makes clear procedural and political limits.

Both outlets describe the document as a draft or leaked proposal rather than an enacted policy and note that HHS did not comment to some outlets.

They remind readers that the President must submit a budget and that Congress would ultimately negotiate funding and statutory changes.

Both pieces flag that statutory protections for some institutes could complicate consolidation and that allies in Congress could attempt to block or modify the plan, so the leak signals intent but does not mean the full plan will be implemented as written.

Tone and coverage differences

The Transmitter centers expert warnings about the national and economic risks of a 40% NIH cut and notes statutory and congressional complications.

MedPage Today offers a granular policy and organizational readout that names eliminated institutes, administrative moves, and proposed changes to indirect-cost policy to show how the cuts would be operationalized.

Both sources agree on the core facts but diverge in emphasis, with one providing a big-picture warning and the other offering technical, program-level mapping.

Only the two article snippets provided (The Transmitter and MedPage Today, both labeled "Other") were available for this summary, so no additional source texts were supplied and cross-source perspective is limited.