In an unprecedented move, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has begun a mass termination of research grants that fund active scientific projects because they no longer meet "agency priorities".
NIH staff members have been instructed to identify and potentially cancel grants for projects studying transgender populations, gender identity, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the scientific workforce, environmental justice and any other research that might be perceived to discriminate on the basis of race or ethnicity, according to documents and an audio recording that Nature has obtained. Grants that allot funding to universities in China and those relating to climate change are also under scrutiny.
The actions come in the second month of US President Donald Trump’s presidency; on his first day in office, Trump issued executive orders "restoring freedom of speech" to "the American people" and "defending women from gender ideology extremism" by banning the allocation of federal funding to projects that "promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology".
