The drastic reduction in indirect costs is not a path to innovation or cost savings — it’s a threat to U.S.’s position as global leader in medical research.

The Trump administration’s decision to cap how much NIH will pay for indirect costs on university research grants would cost 10 red states more than $1 billion.

T he U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the largest funder of biomedical research in the world, and its grants create the foundation of basic science knowledge on which major health advances are built. On Feb. 7, the NIH announced that it would cut "indirect expenses" in the funding it provides to research grants by nearly half.