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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

We are hoping that watching the number of overdue grants each month will give us insight into things like funding freezes. Below we see that almost 60% of Columbia's grants whose most recent funding period ended in March are overdue. More on that freeze here: www.science.org/content/arti... 4/5

We have zeroed in on institutions with more than 20 grants that had a budget period ending in March 2025 and plotted the percentage of these grants that were still overdue. Columbia, which has been under a funding freeze since early April, stands out. However, we also see UCD pop out at this time. We will continue to track this metric over time to better understand grant funding delays that may not be reported publicly.

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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

Delays at the NIH likely explain a lot of the 30-day overdue grants. But there are still substantially more primary grants at least 60 days overdue now than last May. We are concerned that many may be effectively terminated. 2/5

A second bar graph shows a similar number of overdue supplements today as in May 2024, but the number of overdue primary grants is far higher.

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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

A sizeable number of NIH grants are going multiple months without a new funding period arriving in RePORTER. The Grant Watch team has begun to track these overdue grants in an effort to shed further light on our broken system. grant-watch.us/posts/tracki... 1/5

We found 1066 which were 30 days overdue, 502 that were 60 days overdue, and 309 that were 90 days overdue.

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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

The District Court of R.I. has ordered a preliminary injuction against the termination of $11 Billion in COVID-19 funding. An earlier TRO in this case resulted in 60-70 NIH grants being reinstated as well as numerous CDC grants. www.courtlistener.com/docket/69829...

Upon consideration of the States' Motion for a Preliminary Injunction (ECF No. 60 ), it is hereby ORDERED:1) Defendants and all their respective officers, agents, servants, employees and attorneys, and any persons in active concert or participation with them who receive actual notice of this order (collectively "Enjoined Parties") are hereby preliminarily enjoined from implementing or enforcing through any means the decision made on or about March 24, 2025 that numerous health programs and appropriations responsible for $11 billion of critical federal financial assistance were "no longer necessary" because the "COVID-19 pandemic is over" ("Public Health Funding Decision"), including any funding terminations, or from taking any action to reinstitute the Public Health Funding Decision for the same or similar reasons. This injunction is limited to funding for Plaintiff States, including their local health jurisdictions and any bona fide fiscal agents of Plaintiff States or their local health jurisdictions. 2) The Enjoined Parties shall immediately treat any actions taken to implement or enforce the Public Health Funding Decision, including any funding terminations, as null and void and rescinded. The Enjoined Parties must immediately take every step necessary to effectuate this order, including clearing any administrative, operational, or technical hurdles to implementation.3) Defendants' counsel shall provide written notice of this order to all Defendants and agencies and their employees, contractors, and grantees by the end of the day on Tuesday, May 20, 2025.4) By the end of the day on Tuesday, May 20, 2025, the Defendants SHALL FILE on the Court's electronic docket a Status Report documenting the actions that they have taken to comply with this Order, including a copy of the notice and an explanation as to whom the notice was sent.

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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

Just gonna keep posting about cases cause the action is so good. Plaintiffs in PFLAG v. Trump prodded HHS for more info on 215 terminated grants to see if any violated the injuction. Within the last day, the Feds updated the number to 200 and reiterated that these were independent of EO 14187.

A screenshot from May 1, 2025 of the "Report to the President on Protecting Children from Surgical and Chemical Mutilation Executive Summary".

Relevant text:
District courts have wrongly preliminarily enjoined enforcement of Section 4, and the administration is appealing these incorrect decisions. While on appeal, HHS has complied with those preliminary injunctions.

Completely independent from EO 14187 and EO 14168, HHS began to conduct an internal review process of all grants to ensure that Federal funding is used to prioritize projects that will generate a high return on the public’s investment. Based on an individualized review, HHS terminated approximately 200 grants because they have not been shown to be scientific, to have meaningful identifiable return on investment, or to enhance the health of many Americans. These terminations saved taxpayers over approximately $477 million.

A screenshot from the April 29th, 2025 archived version of the "Report to the President on Protecting Children from Surgical and Chemical Mutilation Executive Summary"

Relevant text:
Section 4 directs HHS to “immediately take appropriate steps to ensure that [medical] institutions receiving federal research or education grants end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children.”

HHS has eliminated 215 such grants, saving taxpayers over $477 million.

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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

Financial entries in TAGGS do suggest that action was taken on these grants on 04/28 and 04/29. We often see this with known reinstatements. 8/

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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

The Feds again maintained that the terminations did not violate the court's order. Even so, they pointed out that the NIH took action this week to reinstate those grants. We will have to see if that is reflected on the TAGGS PDF tomorrow or RePORTER on Sunday. 7/

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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

The final grant of the 6, 5K08HS029028-02, is a special case. I also don't think we detected that as a cancellation, because funding ran out on 03/31. It's unclear to me if the NIH was dragging its feet on renewal, but ultimately the next year was awarded on 04/22 or 04/23. 5/

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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

Ultimately, in the Feds' view, they were compliant with the court's orders. But cancellations continued on 03/12, 03/13, and 03/21. Again, the States viewed this as non-compliance and called the NIH on the potential cancellation of 6 grants. The NIH again reversed course and reinstated 5. 4/

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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

A bit of background. On Feb. 28th, while a TRO was still in effect and right before the Feb. 28th preliminary injuction, the NIH terminated a grant to Seattle Children's Hospital. The States were granted expedited discovery to investigate and the NIH reversed course by reinstating the grant. 2/

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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

I know a lot is going on the news right now, but it is worth having some success stories to digest. This is preliminary, but as of 2025-04-13 I believe there is evidence for 57 COVID-19 related grant reinstatements linked to the April 5 COLORADO v HHS TRO. More are likely happening this week.

Potential NIH grant reinstatement counts linked to the April 5 2025 TRO of COLORADO v HHS. A total of 57 individual grants is shown as of 2025-04-13.

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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

Every time I see a cancellation screwing with something for kids, I get especially irate. On April 1st, HHS canceled a grant for PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs which funded a program geared towards teaching high school student's how to be health science communicators.

Information for the cancelation of a grant PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs. The grant number is 5R25GM150172-02 and the picture shows a reduction in the project end and budget end dates, which is consistent with cancellation.

Information from RePORTER for 5R25GM150172-02 showing a Post Award Action Type of "Terminated - Departmental Authority".

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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

I definitely missed the Post Award Action Type being added to terminated grants in RePORTER. It doesn't seem to be a field returned from the API, so not sure how it is populated. It's also a bit laggy since this is from the University of Utah grant that they confirmed was re-instated.

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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

Sorry, bit late on this. On 2025-03-17 taggs.hhs.gov posted an updated list of 208 NIH grants which were officially terminated. Just wanted to note that this mostly includes grants terminated before 03-13 and likely misses around 100 from the end of last week. web.archive.org/web/20250319...

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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

After a hiatus, some competitive National Institute of Aging awards have started showing up in RePORTER. 12 with an award notice date on or after March 11.

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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

Absolutely what I expected from this town

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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

Beagan ceòl bhon fheasgar seo airson Là Fhèill Pàdraig. Great music and a great time at #TheBurren in #Boston for #SaintPatricksDay. Slán abhaile agus oidhche mhath a chàirdean. Good night to you all.

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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

In order to enrich for changes related to cuts, I first focused on entries where the Project End Date and the Award Amount are curtailed. This gives about 17 results for this week with a couple of the mouse studies that were targeted by the WH popping up. www.whitehouse.gov/articles/202... 2/

Pictured are 2 grants with altered Project End Dates and curtailed Awards for 1R01HD115881 and 5R01HD111650, which in part looked into the effects of hormones on mice. Both entries are now listed as ending on March 3rd, 2025.

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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

This is about $1.1 Billion in unrenewed funding, if the project was funded at the same level as the previous fiscal year. This is up from around $0.5 Billion over the last few years. 2/

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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

Trying to get a core set of plots started which I can auto-generate weekly to track the state of RePORTER. Here I was looking at the number of non-competitive project numbers who were missing any renewals at the second week of March each year. Up to 1553 this year compared to 667 last year. 1/

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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

Interesting thread. So when I see records listed with direct costs of $1 in RePORTER, this is likely that the budget period passed without any funds being used?

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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

Other data might be interesting especially across time and many files. Like this entry for 5R01ES030616-05 in the 2025-01-06 data whose project and budget end date changed from the end of 2025 to the end of FISCAL year 2025. This is health disparities research at Columbia so it caught my eye. 4/

Screenshot showing budget and project end date updates for 5R01ES030616-05

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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

Taking data from 2025-01-06 as an example, most changes in the database will be super innocuous and probably should be de-duplicated. Like I am going to track a fair amount of promotions. Congrats to Prof. Jason Radley! 3/

A change to RePORTER entries from 2024-01-06 showing Prof. Jason J. Radley's title change from Associate Professor to Professor and Ketchel Faculty Fellow.

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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

I am an industry scientist and also a parent, so free time is super limited. Thus, I am taking the project super slow. Right now, my changelog is basically a local git repo tracking a series of pretty JSON. Clunky but useful. Hopefully by the end of this week or next it will be a nice DB. 2/

Output from a git commit showing 406 files changed across my repo of RePORTER JSON outputs. One file was added which is this week's new RePORTER entries.

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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

A good chunk of scoring is just "what fragments should be present?" And "what weight should I give those fragments?" Software likes to hide the relationship between the FASTA and the predicted library. But it's been there at least since Eng et al. 1994

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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Might be a nice day to read through the NCCIH's 21-25 plan, especially for working towards Whole Person Health. www.nccih.nih.gov/about/nccih-... pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

A figure from the NCCIH's 21-25 strategic plan showing psychological stress, poor diet, and sedentary lifestyle contributing to disease. On the left is an arrow showing self care, psychological, nutritional, and physical multi component interventions leading to a healthy individual.

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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

It looks like early month backfill might happen, with this being a particularly egregious month. No idea if certain types of awards are more likely to be backfilled though.

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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 15/02/2025

Oh great, the administration obsessed with border expansion and the fitness of our draft population is throwing out Napoleon quotes.

Seventy-seven percent of young adults do not qualify for the military based in large part on their health scores.

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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

Not entirely sure what this is going to look like, but they are coming after public-private partnerships. I'm sure the "ethics review" here will mostly revolve around political alignment.

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Anthony Barente @anthonybarente.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

There's a lot of bad in this EO, but I did get a kick out of this 5G conspiracy shoutout.

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