$783M DEI Revival Stuns Taxpayers

Person pointing at DEI symbols on glass.

Hundreds of millions in previously frozen DEI and gender‑identity grants are quietly being put back on the table at NIH, even as the Trump administration tries to steer federal science money away from woke social engineering.

Story Snapshot

NIH is reconsidering thousands of DEI and gender‑identity grants worth roughly $783 million after court fights and settlements.
Federal judges forced NIH to restore more than 2,000 canceled awards and review over 5,000 grants without anti‑DEI criteria.
The Trump administration and NIH leadership still say DEI is no longer a funding priority going forward.
Taxpayers face a tug‑of‑war between reining in ideological research and court‑driven efforts to protect the DEI status quo.

How DEI Politics Overtook Federal Health Research

When President Trump returned to office in early 2025, his administration moved quickly to stop the use of federal health dollars for ideological projects dressed up as science. Internal directions at the National Institutes of Health told staff to halt or terminate grants built around diversity, equity and inclusion branding, gender identity agendas, and related identity‑based work. That sweep also reached projects on vaccine hesitancy, environmental health, and LGBTQ‑focused studies, triggering anger across progressive academic and advocacy circles.

The decision to freeze or cancel those awards did not stay inside NIH conference rooms for long. University researchers, public‑health associations, unions, and Democratic state attorneys general raced to federal court, claiming the administration was singling out their favored topics for ideological reasons. In Massachusetts, a trial judge said NIH’s actions likely violated administrative‑law rules and ordered more than 2,000 already‑awarded grants restored. That ruling invited more litigation and set up a broader clash over who controls federal research priorities.

Courts Push Back, Forcing NIH to Reopen the Spigot

Through the summer and fall of 2025, the fight moved through higher courts, including the First Circuit and then the Supreme Court. Judges acknowledged serious problems with how NIH defined and applied the term “DEI” while cutting off certain lines of research. At the same time, the Supreme Court limited direct financial remedies and steered some damage claims into the specialized Court of Federal Claims, showing reluctance to micromanage how an agency spends appropriated money.

Under mounting legal pressure, NIH and the Trump administration settled with the main plaintiff groups at the end of 2025. In return for dropping their lawsuits, the agency agreed to reconsider thousands of frozen, denied, or withdrawn applications using its normal peer‑review process. That agreement explicitly bars staff from applying the earlier anti‑DEI criteria in those reconsiderations. The pool of affected funding is enormous, with a Supreme Court analysis tying roughly $783 million in NIH grants to the contested policies and more than 5,000 grants covered by one multistate settlement.

What the Reconsideration Wave Really Means

By late December 2025 and into January 2026, NIH began issuing decisions on the backlog. Higher‑education outlets reported that hundreds of previously shelved or rejected proposals had now been approved. State attorneys general said 528 grants were decided on the same day their settlement was filed, and civil‑liberties groups highlighted projects on HIV prevention, Alzheimer’s, LGBTQ health, and sexual‑violence research as big winners. For progressive activists, the settlements were framed as a crucial defeat for what they call anti‑science, anti‑DEI politics.

For conservative taxpayers, the picture is more complicated. The settlements do not force NIH to embrace DEI permanently, and they apply mainly to grants caught mid‑stream or applications already in the pipeline. NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya has publicly said the agency is “not interested in funding DEI anymore” and that many DEI‑branded projects restored under court order will not be renewed when they expire in 2026. That means a wave of money will still flow to identity‑focused work for now, but long‑term priorities are shifting.

NIH Signals a Broader Retreat from Woke Requirements

Even while it reprocesses the disputed grants, NIH is dismantling the bureaucratic machinery that hard‑wired DEI into federal science. The agency has dropped requirements for “Diversity Plans” and “Plans for Enhancing Diverse Perspectives” from funding announcements, and it has said that any such plans already submitted will not be considered in deciding who gets awards. NIH is also rewriting its inclusion policy to focus more narrowly on women and racial or ethnic minorities in clinical trials, stepping back from broad equity language.

Those moves reflect a deeper debate about what federal health research is supposed to accomplish. Supporters of the older DEI regime say these mechanisms were needed to correct bias and expand representation. Critics argue they turned medicine into a vehicle for quota‑driven social policy, sidelining rigorous science in favor of buzzwords. The current compromise leaves conservatives with structural wins on future policy while swallowing a large, court‑protected batch of legacy DEI‑oriented projects.

At the same time, the settlements highlight how difficult it is to unwind progressive programs once they are embedded in federal agencies. Judges faulted NIH for failing to define key terms and for acting too abruptly when it cut off funding. That message should resonate with any administration that wants to roll back politicized research: reforms must be grounded in clear rules, careful procedures, and respect for the separation of powers, or else courts will push back and keep controversial spending alive.

Why This Matters for Conservatives and the Constitution

For readers worried about runaway federal spending and ideological capture of institutions, the NIH saga is a cautionary tale and a partial victory. On one hand, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are still heading toward projects that many families see as distractions from core medical needs. On the other hand, the agency is now on record that DEI branding is no longer a central funding priority, and formal DEI mandates are being stripped out of its grant system.

The bigger constitutional concern is the ongoing tug‑of‑war between elected leadership, permanent bureaucracies, and courts. Congress appropriates the money, presidents set broad direction, and agencies like NIH implement it, but judges can slow or complicate course corrections when past policies become entrenched. For conservatives who want limited government, this episode underscores the need for durable statutory reforms that protect scientific inquiry while preventing activist bureaucrats from laundering divisive ideologies through ostensibly neutral research grants.