NIH Funding Reaches Record High After Trump Signs $49 Billion Budget

President Donald Trump last week signed a spending package that funds the National Institutes of Health with nearly $49 billion, more than ever before, reversing his earlier push for a 40% cut to the budget of the world's premier funder of medical research.

Nine months ago, thousands of NIH employees had been fired. The Trump administration was trying to cut billions in "indirect costs" that fund things like lab equipment and janitors. Hundreds of grants had been canceled; thousands more were in limbo. Trump was pushing a 40% cut to the NIH budget, saying NIH was "too big" and had "broken the trust of the American people."

Most of the grants that had been frozen or terminated seem to have been reinstated. The push to cut researchers' "indirect costs" has been blocked by courts. The new spending package not only does not cut NIH but also funds it with more than a $415 million increase.

Seattle is a hub of medical research, with institutions like Seattle Children's, Fred Hutch and the University of Washington receiving more than $1 billion annually from NIH. Seattle Children's received $105 million from NIH in 2025, which was about 70% of the hospital's total research funding. Fred Hutch also gets about 70% of its research funding from NIH, about $400 million last year.

There is no publicly available government catalog of all the grants canceled or delayed last year by the Trump administration as it sought, through its Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, to reshape the federal government and slash spending. A database compiled by a Harvard data scientist and others lists more than 5,400 NIH grants that were, at one point, either canceled or frozen. Of those, over 4,200 have since been reinstated, according to the database, after rounds of litigation across the country.

The database lists 49 NIH grants in Washington that were disrupted — studying things like opioid abuse, sexual assault recovery, HIV and Alzheimer's — of which 34 have since been reinstated.

Despite congressional Republicans' seeming lockstep support of Trump's agenda, many were not on board with Trump's push for deep cuts to medical research. The chair of the subcommittee overseeing NIH funding said last week: "I think we were all stunned when we saw that the president's budget came out with a 40% cut to the NIH, and then when asked about it, the president says 'I'm all for biomedical research.' I'm like 'Well, there's a disconnect between what you're sending to us and what you're telling the American people.'"

The top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee said she worked with Republicans to preserve NIH funding. NIH funding passed as part of a broad government spending bill. The package garnered more Democratic support than it perhaps would have after Democrats were able to sever funding for the Department of Homeland Security, including ICE, from the broader package.

For Camden Riley, a second grader from Tacoma, NIH funding has been vital to the last two years of his young life. In 2024, Camden was diagnosed with a rare germ cell tumor in his brain. That type of tumor represents just 2% or 3% of central nervous system tumors in children. Because of the location of the tumor, a biopsy to determine if it was benign or malignant was extremely risky. Doctors at Seattle Children's were able to use DNA testing of his cerebral spinal fluid — instead of a surgical biopsy — to identify the tumor and determine the course of treatment. That testing came from NIH-funded research.