According to The New York Post, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Department of Health and Human Services has stopped nearly $122 million in grants for projects deemed a poor use of taxpayer money due to their focus on LGBT issues and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI).
The grants, which funded 195 projects, were determined by the Trump administration to focus too narrowly on sexual or racial minority groups. The cancellations sparked outrage from some Biden-era holdover officials and contributed to at least one high-profile resignation this week.
Precise savings are unclear since some awards had already been partially dispensed and spanned multiple years. Most grants were terminated in March in coordination with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), while others were canceled as recently as this month.
Among the largest to be axed was a $5.5 million National Cancer Institute grant to Vanderbilt University Medical Center for its “Vanderbilt FIRST” initiative, which aimed to “recruit at least 18 tenure-track faculty from minoritized [sic] racial and ethnic groups,” according to records reviewed by The Post. Vanderbilt, which has a $10 billion endowment ranked among the nation’s top 20, said the funds were necessary to “identify and eliminate organizational barriers” facing diverse faculty.
Drexel University in Philadelphia lost more than $4.6 million in National Cancer Institute funding for a program called “Catalyzing Systemic Change at Drexel University to Support Diverse Faculty in Health Disparities Research,” which sought to mentor early-stage faculty focused on health disparities.
Also cut was a $2.4 million grant to the University of Virginia from the National Institute of Mental Health for a project titled “Neurodevelopmental Biomarkers of Late Diagnosis in Female and Gender Diverse Autism.” The grant was part of a larger $12 million endowment UVA announced in 2022.
Full story over at The New York Post:
RFK Jr.’s HHS slashes $122M across nearly 200 DEI, LGBT-focused research projects https://t.co/rqrK2tXOJ0 pic.twitter.com/0KtGFBG4y0
— New York Post (@nypost) August 29, 2025
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