The National Institutes of Health’s new cost-cutting plan will eliminate more than $7.5 million in active and pending University of Maine System research grants if it withstands a legal challenge, officials said Monday.
It is another consequence of President Donald Trump’s fast-moving efforts to slash government spending. The federal medical research agency’s plan, which was announced Friday and takes effect Monday, would cap indirect cost reimbursements at 15 percent instead of the average of roughly 27 percent. It already faces a lawsuit from Maine and 21 other Democratic-led states.
If it is upheld, the federal decision will cut $1.38 million in support for existing University of Maine System research programs and $6.23 million tied to pending awards, spokesperson Samantha Warren said. Most of the affected research is at the University of Maine, but Warren said some of the awards are tied to the University of Southern Maine.
The Trump administration reportedly estimated the 15 percent cap would save $4 billion a year. The National Institutes of Health spent about $35 billion on grants to research institutions during the 2023 fiscal year. Reimbursements for indirect costs, going to areas such as labs, facilities, faculty, infrastructure and utilities, accounted for about $9 billion of that.
Warren said the policy that Trump is seeking to overturn has been standard since the 1950s. While sometimes called “overhead,” Warren said the money is “foundational to our public universities’ research activities and covers essential expenses, including those necessary to comply with extensive federal regulations, operate and maintain our campus laboratories and safeguard scientific discoveries from foreign adversaries.”
Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey and his counterparts in 21 other states have filed a lawsuit arguing the decision violates a federal law passed during Trump’s first term to prevent a similar move. Apart from leading to suspended clinical trials, disrupted research and closed labs, the attorneys general argued it could compromise U.S. leadership in lifesaving medical research.
U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, called the cap “poorly conceived” in a Monday statement that said she spoke with Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about the plan. Kennedy pledged to “reexamine” the move if he is confirmed, Collins said.
Collins also said the cap would be “devastating” to research at The Jackson Laboratory, the University of Maine, Maine Medical Center’s Research Institute, the University of New England and MDI Biological Laboratory.
The University of Maine System otherwise has 23 active awards from the National Institutes of Health that include $8.79 million in federal funding for “cutting-edge research to improve Mainers’ health and well-being and build the state’s bioscience workforce and economy,” Warren said. An additional 26 awards worth nearly $29 million are pending.
Warren also said that “walking back funding promises on activity already underway weakens Maine’s largest research enterprises, reduces access to hands-on learning opportunities for Maine students and threatens the development of Maine-made cures, including for cancer, heart disease, infectious diseases and neuromuscular disorders.”
