‘Graveyard for Grants’: NIH Is Holding Up Medical Research Funding

Hundreds of grants, including for maternal health, contraceptives and drug abuse, are in limbo, subject to political reviews. It used to be that once a National Institutes of Health grant award hit “status 19,” the money was about to go out the door.

The Trump administration has enacted an unprecedented political review process, pushing hundreds of awards into limbo. Status 19 — an administrative code describing awards with senior leadership sign-off — is being used as the holding cell.

What Happened

Current and former career staff say this extra review by senior leaders is occurring after grants have undergone peer review, been approved by multiple offices in NIH, and screened for red-flag words around race, gender or other behavioral and social sciences. The.

• Around 8% of new grant awards are sitting in status 19 for anywhere from two to seven weeks, according to internal data shared with NOTUS.

• In past years, around 11% of first-time awards had been released to the recipients within a week.

• The vast majority previously left status 19 within three days; now it takes 53 days to get 90% of payments out the door.

Key Details

As a result, some grants are lingering in status 19 for weeks or even months, gumming up the works as grant officers try to get awards out the door ahead of the new fiscal year starting in October. Flagged grants reviewed by.

• Lauer, who served as NIH’s extramural research director from 2015 to February 2025, said he couldn’t recall a time when a political appointee — including the NIH director — halted awarding of a research.

• Researchers say they’ve seen more delays in posting those notices — another obstacle in getting grant funding out the door.

• Trump appointees are also conducting extra layers of review to the notices posted by the government to let researchers know money is available for specific projects or programs.

Why It Matters

A second senior NIH official called status 19 a “graveyard for grants.” The NIH staffers were granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media. As one of the largest grant funders in the federal government, NIH’s process is a.

• Lauer said releasing grant money might face occasional delays, but it was almost always because Congress had failed to pass a budget for NIH, leading to uncertainty about how much total grant funding would.

• She said grants can remain in status 19 for five to 10 days while they are given final review by the Office of Extramural Research.

What Reports Say

Coverage of the story so far points to:

• Continued reporting by News of the United States - NOTUS as more details emerge