NIH Scientists Protest Layoffs and Research Freezes

Researchers from the National Institutes of Health rallied in Washington, DC, on Feb. 19 to protest layoffs and research freezes caused by President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders.

NIH reportedly laid off almost 1,200 probationary employees on Saturday. Many employees who were crucial to research were terminated, said Matthew Brown, recording secretary for the NIH Fellows United union. Those affected include animal care technicians, pharmacists, lab managers, and procurement officers, he added.

“We have not heard anything from leadership about specifics of who’s terminated, about specifics of why they were terminated,” Brown said at the rally, held in front of the Department of Health and Human Services headquarters. “We’ve basically been left to pick all that up on our own.”

(As of publication, HHS had not responded to a request for details on the scale of layoffs.)

Three Democrats from Maryland’s congressional delegation — Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Reps. Glenn Ivey and Jamie Raskin — spoke at the rally to show support for employees at NIH and other federal agencies. Raskin said he has spoken to constituents who were laid off because a recent promotion put them on probationary status and that many termination messages claimed the workers had performed poorly despite them having achieved high marks.

“These are people who have superior work evaluations and yet they’ve been sacked in total violation of the civil service laws and in total violation of the First Amendment,” Raskin said.

It is unclear if any one research group has been hit harder by the layoffs, Brown said. “It’s just been so far spread across the NIH that it’s affecting cancer, it’s affecting Alzheimer’s research, ALS research, kidney disease, heart disease, anything,” he added.

Brown said the union has not yet heard about any layoffs of fellows in their bargaining unit. (The union represents about 5,000 early-career NIH researchers.)

Bushraa Khatib, formerly a science writer for NIH’s National Institute of dental and Craniofacial Research, said she was laid off on Saturday along with two other probationary employees on her nine-person team of science communicators. She had been working at the agency since June, communicating the institute’s research results for general audiences.

“That’s all those pages that are for the public to say, ‘Oh, what do I need to know about tooth decay or oral cancer?’ And then we have vetted accurate, up-to-date references on our website,” Khatib said. “It’s very scary that they’re removing the communicators who are congressionally mandated to report to taxpayers what the results of the research is and what their taxpayer money is funding.”

Researchers at the rally also spoke about the effects of the recent executive orders, including those freezing federal grant funding and dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. For instance, the NIH has ended F-31D grants, a subset of the prestigious F-31 grants for doctoral students, because they specifically support training for individuals from backgrounds underrepresented in the biomedical sciences.

At Johns Hopkins University, 34 doctoral workers currently have dissertations funded through F-31D grants, out of 81 F-31 grants at the university, said JHU doctoral student Marie Pearce, reading a statement from a fellow JHU graduate student.

“The evaluation criteria and scientific merit for F-31Ds are identical to F-31s,” Pearce said. “These 34 doctoral workers, and their commitments to the communities they serve as researchers and clinicians, are threatened by this administration’s cuts, not because the research is not scientifically rigorous or worthy, but solely because this administration believes they are not worthy.”

NIH researchers said the agency has also terminated certain research projects, which they are now not allowed to work on even as unpaid volunteers.

“When I hear people say these cuts are making our government more efficient, I am at a loss,” said NIH fellow Connor Phillips, who was working on a now-terminated project developing new therapies for cerebral palsy. “How can that be true when I’m prevented from working for free?”

Brown said the agency has taken down “fairly run-of-the-mill” banners that offer encouraging messages to people in different research areas, which may be a result of the executive order on DEI.

“Really just absurd. It’s kind of beyond the pale, in my opinion, that they would go after something so just generally positive,” he said.

Matt Biggs, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers union, said congressional Republicans have “handed over their legislative branch responsibilities to a couple of billionaires who are now running a coup on the country.”

In response to a call from the crowd for Congress to take action, Raskin said, “We’re looking for a few good Republicans to come over and join the Democrats and overturn this radical assault on science and healthcare in America.”

Congressional Republicans have not issued public statements on the layoffs at NIH, though Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-ME) criticized the Trump administration’s move to cap the indirect cost rate for NIH grants at 15%.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did not directly address the layoffs in his opening remarks to the department on Tuesday but said he aims to create a culture of “competency” and “openness,” including by preventing conflicts of interests and making data and policy processes more transparent.

“Sure, those who are unwilling to embrace those ideals can retire,” Kennedy said. “But I understand that it is a system and not the people in it that is the main problem.”