Scores of science grants focused on members of the LGBTQ+ community have been canceled in the wake of President Trump‘s executive orders stripping DEI and “gender ideology” from the federal government.

The surge of cancellations hit researchers focused on LGBTQ+ health over the last several weeks, the AP reports, in a drive to stamp out what the Trump administration calls ideologically driven science.

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I work at NIH. The fear among staff is palpable.
“It felt like all functions of our job had just been completely stripped away, like the system had been completely crippled.”

At least 68 grants to 46 institutions were terminated last week alone, according to a government website. Much of the nearly $40 million in money awarded to researchers and institutions was already spent, but the cancellations foreclose the possibility of continuing research for long-term studies.

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Many of the grants were awarded through the National Institutes of Health, an agency administered through the Department of Health and Human Services.

“NIH is going back on their contractual obligations to us. I have never heard of this before, and I’ve been around for a second,” Whitney L. Wharton, an Atlanta-based researcher, told Roll Call.

“It’s literally a 180. There was no warning, other than the writing on the wall, politically,” Wharton said. Her research involved trans people.

News of the cancellations came in an identical message to recipients, which read in part, “Research programs based on gender identity are often unscientific, have little identifiable return on investment, and do nothing to enhance the health of many Americans.”

“Everyone I know and work with is expecting this letter to come to their inbox,” said Tara McKay, an associate professor at Vanderbilt University whose canceled grant was related to studying the effects of social networks on LGBTQ+ health disparities.

The terminations mark an end to a ten-year run for what researchers call “sexual and gender minority” health at the NIH, which created the Sexual and Gender Minority Research Office in 2015. The office coordinated grants related to LGBTQ+ health across the agency’s 27 institutes and centers.

It was one of the first victims of Trump’s “gender ideology” and DEI diktats issued in January.

The NIH, which faces a broader threat from the Trump administration and anti-vax HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, has contributed to scientific advances like the Human Genome Project and mRNA vaccines, which were deployed during the COVID pandemic.

“Our study tries to provide new information and to take a deeper dive on what’s driving well-documented disparities” among the LGBTQ+ community and the broader population, McKay said.

“You need to understand the mechanisms to develop effective interventions,” she said. “Not having this information is a major loss to the field.”

Jace Flatt, an associate professor at UNLV who has worked with Wharton, had two NIH grants and one administered through the Department of Defense canceled. That research included trans people.   

“It absolutely will create a huge gap in the knowledge we will have,” said Flatt, who said they’ll continue doing the work despite the loss in federal support.

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