The National Institutes of Health (NIH) wields a $47.5 billion budget. More than 80% of its funds go out the door as grants to answer pressing biomedical questions. Over the decades, those grants have helped decipher the human genome, eliminate the polio virus in the U.S. and turn AIDS from a death sentence to a survivable illness.
For new discoveries, everyday mysteries and the science behind the headlines, follow NPR’s Short Wave podcast. But experts say this kind of fundamental science is coming up against an administration that has delayed funding and rerouted billions of dollars in research, resulting in chaos for researchers and patients alike. Trump officials say the administration's practices serve to further the agency's goals.
"NIH is committed to responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars and to advancing rigorous, high-impact science that improves health outcomes for the American people," Emily Hilliard, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH, wrote in an August email. More political oversight may be coming to how those funds get dispersed, according to recent reports. For now, court cases have restored funding, and Congress has preserved it in successive budget bills.
But for the scientists who have had to scrap time-sensitive experiments or have seen their labs shuttered, those top-line numbers do not tell the full story. Here are six graphics that highlight some of the less visible impacts of changes in research funding at the NIH. The Trump administration proposed cutting the NIH budget by 41%, or by about $19.6 billion, for 2026.
It also asked to restructure 27 institutes to eight — eliminating four outright — in its request. Congress did neither; in fact, it maintained both the existing institutes and a budget that was on par with previous years' appropriations. But experts say that though the total amount of funding suggests that little has changed, it masks a deeper disruption in the way that money moves.
Once money is appropriated by Congress, it then has to be obligated by the NIH — committing the funds to specific projects via grants. Those grants are generally doled out at a fairly consistent rate throughout the year. But since President Trump's inauguration in 2025, that process has slowed to a crawl.
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