This week at Unbreaking, January 30
This week, we have a briefing focused on Medical Research Funding and updates from our Data Security and Federal Workforce teams. Like many people, we are closely watching Immigration, and we have more on that, too.
Medical Research Funding briefing
After a grisly series of cancellations and suspensions, rescinded grant money started flowing again late last year — but between financial maneuvers that create a false sense of normalcy and policy changes that increase ideological control, the biomedical funding landscape remains fraught.
In 2025, the administration withheld billions of already-committed research dollars. It cancelled or suspended more than 5,800 active NIH grants for projects that had fought their way through the super-competitive funding process and been contractually awarded the money. Labs had to lay off researchers and delay or abandon work. And patients suffered. Many of the largest affected grants were for cancer centers and clinical trials: More than 300 trials had their grants terminated, affecting more than 70,000 enrolled participants.
As we begin 2026, successful lawsuits and grant restorations have winnowed down the lost funding to $720 million. The improvement is important but partial at best. Here’s why:
- Untold and ultimately unknowable damage has already been done. Patients who got sicker or died waiting for trials that might have helped them cannot be made whole. Some interruptions can’t be solved by restoring funding — projects, data, and entire careers have been permanently erased. And loss of expertise is hard to quantify, but for example, more than 10,000 PhD-holding researchers left the federal government in 2025 due to defunding, job cuts, reorganizations, and general chaos.
- When the NIH finally did resume spending in 2025, it also changed its grantmaking in a quiet but crucial way. “Forward funding” sounds innocuous, perhaps even helpful. Getting four years of funding upfront instead of annual payments spread across five years might even benefit certain projects. But overall, it drastically reduces the number of grants the NIH can award in a year and reduces the time supported labs have to complete their projects.
- Our once-reliable funding system is now unpredictable. Research groups can no longer trust that committed federal money will actually be paid out, and many are now forced into contortions to avoid naming entirely legitimate subjects (like racial health disparities) to avoid ideological interference. Billions of dollars are still being arbitrarily yanked and restored with no consultation or clear reason.
Looking ahead to the new budget for the NIH itself, Congress has finally reasserted its authority. Although the White House proposed a roughly 40% cut for the agency, majorities in both the House and Senate rejected this entirely. The spending bill released on January 20, 2026, increases NIH funding by more than $400 million. Even better, it eliminates a punishing overhead-cost cap that the administration has repeatedly attempted to impose and rejects a proposal to radically reorganize NIH divisions.
Fully funding the National Institutes of Health is a significant win, but the overall state of the research sector is discouraging. For decades, American science thrived — and in turn created prosperity — thanks to stable funding. That stability was a bipartisan priority negotiated by Congress, administered by civil servants, and vetted by independent scientists. All of these pillars have now been undermined. As a senior NIH scientist writes, the agency has been “presidentialized,” with its workings and mission “increasingly dictated by the president and White House.”
Ultimately, despite Trump-appointee rhetoric about “gold star science,” the federal funding process has been ideologically captured. NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya stated this week, “I want the NIH to be a central driver of the MAHA agenda…the research arm of MAHA.” If the government stays on this path, biomedical research in the US will be driven by fads and fears instead of facts.
Updates from our other teams
Immigration added more than 30 events to our timeline. In Minnesota, federal immigration agents shot and killed ICE observer Alex Pretti. They also detained two preschoolers whose stories made the news, one of whom is reportedly now ill in a vermin-infested immigration jail in Texas. Federal agents beat, dragged, fired rubber bullets at, pepper-sprayed, tear-gassed, and otherwise seriously injured Minnesotans, stalked food-aid volunteers, terrorized schoolchildren, demanded papers from randomly selected people of color, and deprived detainees of due process and access to counsel, even when they happened to be US citizens and honored veterans. Minnesotans have responded to these attacks on their neighbors with sustained mutual aid, citizen patrols, and massive protests. Customs and Border Protection official Greg Bovino has reportedly been demoted, but detentions continue in Minnesota and across the country, including in Los Angeles, where DHS first rolled out the brutal and arbitrary tactics now on display in the Midwest.
The Data Security team added 12 new entries to the timeline. The government is doubling down on lawsuits seeking voter data and information about patients pursuing gender-affirming care, despite multiple blocked subpoenas and in-court losses. New evidence has also come to light about DOGE sharing Social Security data last spring with an advocacy group looking to overturn election results. Finally, we are distressed to see CISA, the federal standard-bearer for cybersecurity, employing cavalier data practices around commercial AI tools and withdrawing its staff from important security conferences.
The Federal Workforce team added 4 new items to our timeline. We saw continued evidence that the courts are reluctant to strip federal workers of their union rights: For the second time, a judge blocked the administration from dissolving a collective bargaining agreement for 47,000 TSA workers. Also this week, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission scrapped its own enforcement guidance for harassment at work. Although the change targeted trans and nonbinary people, it will affect everyone confronting gendered, racial, and other forms of workplace harassment.
You can read all of our briefings online on the Unbreaking blog.
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