Hakeem Jeffries – Donald Trump’s cuts to medical research would be steep, but Hakeem Jeffries exaggerates them

President Donald Trump has made historically large cuts to medical research, some of them aimed at ending what he refers to as diversity, equity and inclusion^[1] in federally funded studies. His administration is proposing more: Overall funding for the National Institutes of Health would return^[2] to its 2007 level^[3] if Trump’s budget proposal were to be enacted. A recent New York Times story highlighted Trump’s billions in proposed National Cancer Institute cuts and carried the headline, “Trump Is Shutting Down the War on Cancer^[4].”

In the midst of a fight with Republicans over spending and a possible government shutdown, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., criticized the Trump administration’s efforts to cut back medical research funding during a Q&A with reporters.

“Republicans have effectively ended medical research in the United States of America,” Jeffries said^[5] Sept. 24.

Has the Trump administration really ended medical research? While a substantial amount has disappeared, and more could be on the way out if Trump gets his way, Jeffries exaggerated the outlook, even allowing for his “effectively” caveat. Billions of dollars would remain even in the most austere scenario, and there’s uncertainty about whether his most severe proposed cuts will receive congressional approval. 

Even after proposing substantial cuts to the budget of the National Institutes of Health — the main engine funding U.S. medical research — Trump’s proposal would give the institutes $27 billion for fiscal year 2026. 

And Trump’s proposal is not final; Congress could increase that amount. Some experts call that scenario likely.

“The appropriations language making its way through Congress is much less draconian, so it may be too early to know where all this is going to land,” said Richard Frank, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

Jeffries’ office did not provide additional evidence for his statement.

What cuts has Trump made so far?

Trump’s cuts so far take several forms, said Joshua Weitz, a University of Maryland biology professor who co-founded the Science and Community Impacts Mapping Project^[6], which is tracking the impacts of federal funding cuts nationally. Some of these cutbacks are being challenged in court.

• Weeks after Trump’s inauguration, the National Institutes of Health announced^[7] major cuts to “indirect costs” —  funds that pay for facilities, safety and grant administration. It capped indirect costs for labs working on NIH grants at 15%. Previously, the average rate^[8] was about 28%, and sometimes above 60%.

• The White House has terminated thousands of research grants worth approximately $5 billion^[9]. Some of these were canceled for being related to diversity, equity and inclusion^[10], a top target of the administration, such as^[11] a $3.8 million Asian Bipolar Genetics Network study to a $1.05 million Alzheimer’s and dementia study focusing on Black Americans. Others were related to administration efforts to punish elite universities for allegedly allowing antisemitism on campus, leading to hiring freezes^[12] and holds on clinical trials^[13], Harvard University economist David Cutler and Harvard economist Edward Glaeser co-wrote a recent paper^[14] in JAMA Health Forum. “A fraction of these grants have been reinstated, but science does not turn on and off like a spigot,” Weitz said. “Interrupting research leads to wasted studies, risks projects, and is already causing job loss.”

• Through early April, the NIH ousted^[15] 1,200 employees, and granted an unknown number^[16] of retirements and resignations. At the Food and Drug Administration, which approves drugs, thousands of jobs have been eliminated^[17].

• The president’s budget proposal would cut^[18] NIH funding from about $45 billion to about $27 billion. That’s a roughly 39% cut for a budget item that in recent decades has almost always increased from year to year. The proposed budget would eliminate the National Institutes for Nursing Research, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, the Fogarty International Center, and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities.

The consequences of these cuts could be significant. 

“Our research shows that while cutting NIH funding may appear to save money in the short term, it can trigger a chain of effects^[19] that increase long-term health care costs and slow the development of new treatments and public health solutions over time,” Harvard University health policy and data specialists Mohammad S. Jalali and Zeynep Hasgül wrote^[20] for The Conversation. 

Between 2010 and 2019, all but two of the 356 drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration received some NIH funding, one study found^[21]. So any cuts could reduce the number of drugs in the pipeline, experts say.

Once all the follow-on impacts reverberate throughout the U.S. economy and health care system, the cuts could prompt an “$8 trillion health care catastrophe,” Cutler and Glaeser wrote^[22]. They estimated that the losses from reduced health would be 16 times greater than the proposed budgetary savings.

Despite the cuts, medical research is here to stay

The cuts are extensive but do not end U.S. medical research.

Trump’s slashed NIH budget would still spend^[23] more than $27 billion in fiscal year 2026. 

“Novel biomedical discoveries that enhance health and lengthen life are more vital than ever to our country’s future,” the agency said in its budget proposal. “NIH research is critical to protect national security and sustain the United States’ scientific competitiveness, globally.”

The president’s proposal highlighted initiatives on nutrition, obesity, heart disease, diabetes, asthma, autism, and cancer, all priorities of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The FDA would receive a modest budgetary bump^[24] under Trump’s budget proposal, to almost $6.8 billion. 

Despite the Republican majority’s generally close alignment with Trump’s policy agenda, Congress is on record rejecting his proposed medical research cuts, at least in the preliminary stage. 

The Senate^[25] and House^[26] appropriations committees have voted for modest increases in NIH’s budget rather than Trump’s large cuts. They also voted to fund CDC and FDA at higher levels than Trump set out in his budget proposal.

These increases are not guaranteed; they will have to go through negotiations between lawmakers and the president before final passage. 

“Congress is likely to approve much smaller cuts than the Administration had proposed,” said Sherry Glied, a professor at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.

Our ruling

Jeffries said, “Republicans have effectively ended medical research in the United States of America.”

Trump has proposed severe cuts to medical research at the National Institutes of Health and other agencies, including caps on indirect costs for grantees’ labs, terminated grant funding and staff reductions. But this is not tantamount to effectively ending U.S. medical research.

Even if Trump gets his way on a 39% cut to NIH’s budget in 2026, the institutes would still have more than $27 billion to spend in fiscal year 2026.

Trump’s fellow Republicans in Congress may not go along with cuts on the scale the president proposed. Appropriations committees in both the Senate and the House have already rejected Trump’s steep cuts on medical research.

Trump’s medical research cuts are real and sweeping, but they have not “effectively ended medical research.” We rate the statement Mostly False.