By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice
America First Legal (AFL) has brought renewed attention to the termination of 18 National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants in 2025, sharing a detailed report in a thread posted on X on July 16. The group’s findings highlight a series of projects it characterizes as race-based and ideologically driven—grants funded during the Biden Administration and later canceled under new Trump Administration directives.
The AFL thread meticulously documents many of the terminated grants, spotlighting specific examples that have drawn significant scrutiny.
Among them is a $740,000 grant awarded to New York University to assess diversity effects in medical school admissions following the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (600 U.S. 181), which ended race-conscious admissions policies by requiring strict scrutiny for racial classifications and a defined endpoint—a standard these grants arguably failed.
Another high-profile termination involves a $6 million program at the University of Michigan, designed to recruit and advance underrepresented students into biomedical PhD programs based explicitly on race, sex, and ethnicity.
Additional projects include a $2.1 million Emory University study examining meth use among Black gay and bisexual men, attributing it to “structural racism,” and a $2.3 million University of Maryland initiative linking kidney disease disparities to race-based interventions.
The organization’s review encompassed over 4,400 NIH grants, identifying these as symbolic of what it calls “discriminatory junk science.”
Trump’s Day-One Order triggers DEI grant cancellations
This policy shift stems from the Executive Order Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing, issued on January 20, 2025, President Trump’s first day back in office. The directive mandates the elimination of all DEI-related federal programs, contracts, and grants within 60 days, citing a goal of restoring equality under the law and eliminating race- and sex-based preferences in government operations.
Agencies were instructed to review grants awarded since January 20, 2021, and assess their legal and financial implications.
The internal review process identified multiple grants that used race or equity criteria as fundamental requirements for eligibility. The administration stated that these criteria failed to meet the standards of recent legal interpretations regarding equal protection and anti-discrimination statutes.
The decision to cancel funding received opposition from various stakeholders.
Several civil rights organizations together with academic institutions launched legal actions to reverse the funding termination decisions. The plaintiffs maintained that the funding reductions specifically targeted programs serving minority communities while harming researchers from underrepresented groups.
The first major court decision occurred on June 17, 2025 when U.S. District Judge William G. Young from Massachusetts delivered a partial victory to the plaintiffs. The court declared multiple terminations as “void and illegal” because they violated both administrative procedures and constitutional protections.
The court determined that federal agencies failed to follow the required public comment procedures as specified in 5 U.S.C. § 553 of the Administrative Procedure Act. Judge Young determined that the mass grant terminations lacked specific justification which created Fifth Amendment Due Process concerns.
The court acknowledged potential equal protection violations because the termination process seemed to affect specific racial and ethnic groups disproportionately.
AFL defends cancellations as constitutionally required
AFL maintains that the grant terminations remain both legally valid and essential despite the court ruling. The group maintains that funding programs which use identity factors instead of merit or need criteria violate constitutional protections and established legal precedent.
They point again to Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and the Eleventh Circuit’s 2024 ruling in American Alliance for Equal Rights v. Fearless Fund Management, LLC, which held that a grant program exclusive to Black women-owned businesses violated 42 U.S.C. § 1981.
AFL maintains that several NIH grants—including a $1.1 million faculty hiring initiative at Vanderbilt—ran afoul of the same legal standards by prioritizing applicants on the basis of race.
Other legal precedents have been cited to bolster the administration’s defense.
In American Hospital Ass’n v. Becerra (2022), the Supreme Court upheld federal agency actions taken without public comment under the APA when an urgent public interest was at stake. The administration argues that eliminating race-based funding structures satisfies this threshold.
Meanwhile, Board of Regents v. Roth (1972) established that discretionary grants do not create property rights requiring individual hearings. Additionally, Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña (1995) reaffirmed that any race-based policy must withstand strict scrutiny, but also allowed for race-neutral means to address historical inequities—another argument in the administration’s favor.
$30M in canceled grants sparks legal and public backlash
Based on the figures disclosed in the AFL thread, the value of the terminated grants totals an estimated $25 to $30 million. The estimated funding reduction represents only a small portion of the total budget cuts made this year.
The American Association of Universities expressed concerns about research area funding reductions due to the fear these cuts will harm health equity and diversity in science progress.
The public gained better insight into federal research funding distribution after the release of detailed grant information which also revealed who receives the benefits.
Baisley: ‘Out of many, one’—DEI betrays founding ideals
Colorado State Senator Mark Baisley, a Republican representing the 4th Senate District and a candidate for the 2026 Colorado gubernatorial election, offered his perspective in a text on July 18.
“We refer to the signers of the Declaration Of Independence as ‘The Founders’ because they founded the nation on a short list of essential pillars that they described as ‘the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.’ One of those founding principles is that We The People are a ‘melting pot’ rather than the multiculturalism that is advanced by DEI. This concept is captured on the Great Seal of the United States with the motto, ‘e pluribus unum’ which means ‘Out of many, one.’ That motto emphasizes that we are one American people rather than the mere coexistence of multiple cultures. DEI is a liberal rejection of the wisdom of this uniquely American founding principle.”
Court rulings may redefine limits of race-based research
The ongoing legal disputes and agency policy adjustments have not resolved the DEI debate in federally funded research.
The NIH grant cancellations have become a central point in a wider cultural and constitutional conflict which affects academic freedom, civil rights and executive power boundaries.
The courts’ final decision regarding these actions will determine how public research funding and identity-based initiatives will evolve for multiple years ahead.
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