President Donald Trump’s proposed federal budget for 2026 slashes funds for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by $17.97 billion.
The 2026 blueprint was shared Friday (PDF) and allows the NIH to retain $27 billion for research purposes, according to the document, which claims the organization has “grown too big and unfocused.”
This leaves about $3.5 billion unaccounted for when subtracting $17.97 billion from 2025's NIH budget of $48.5 billion. As of publication, the White House had not responded to Fierce Biotech's request for comment on what the remaining funds will be used for.
“NIH has broken the trust of the American people with wasteful spending, misleading information, risky research and the promotion of dangerous ideologies that undermine public health,” Trump’s proposal claims, citing the COVID-19 lab leak theory and diversity, equity and inclusion-related grants as reasons for the massive cuts.
While the Wuhan Institute of Virology was a subrecipient of an NIH grant focused on bat coronaviruses, scientific evidence points to a natural origin for the virus, given its similarity to other bat viruses and known linkage to Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. Despite lacking direct evidence, the White House recently replaced the federal COVID-19 information website with a page promoting the lab leak theory.
DEI has also been a direct target of the Trump administration, with recent rules rolled out that block new grants for any researcher or institution advancing programs related to DEI.
The 2026 proposal includes consolidating the NIH, which consisted of 27 centers and institutes at the beginning of this year, into five entities: the National Institute on Body Systems Research; the National Institute on Neuroscience and Brain Research; the National Institute of General Medical Sciences; the National Institute of Disability Related Research; and the National Institute on Behavioral Health.
Meanwhile, all $534 million in funding for the National Institute on Minority and Health Disparities will be terminated due to its DEI nature.
The proposal also eliminates all funding for the National Institute of Nursing Research, the main federal agency for the support of nursing science; the Fogarty International Center, which supports global health research; and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, which explores alternative and complementary medicines.
This new structure retains the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). The Biden-backed initiative launched in 2022 with $1 billion from Congress to fund high-potential, high-impact biomedical research. In February, Renee Wegrzyn, Ph.D., the inaugural head of ARPA-H, was let go.
NIH research will now align with Trump’s “priorities to address chronic disease and other epidemics, implementing all executive orders and eliminating research on climate change, radical gender ideology and divisive racialism,” the budget reads.
The government agency has already undergone massive restructuring since Trump took office, with 1,000 NIH workers laid off April 1. As of publication, the NIH has not responded to Fierce Biotech about potential additional staff cuts connected to the massive budget reduction.
“The cuts proposed to the National Institutes of Health budget are shocking and would be devasting to the NIH, researchers doing groundbreaking work, patients and families hoping for cures, and America’s economy,” biomedical research advocacy organization United for Medical Research (UMR) said in a May 2 statement.
“If they were to occur, the United States would be giving up our global leadership in biomedical research to competitor nations along with all the benefits our leadership brings to U.S. citizens, our economy and our national security,” the UMR said.
Funding granted to researchers by the NIH powered $94.58 billion in economic activity across the U.S. last year, according to an annual report from the UMR. The economic boost amounted to a "powerful return on investment" of $2.56 for every $1 of research funding spent by the NIH.
The UMR urged Congress to continue its bipartisan support for medical research and the NIH.
Click here for coverage from Fierce Healthcare on how the budget will impact other federal health agencies.