LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The Trump administration is seeking to overturn a judge's ruling that found cuts to research funding were illegal. Craig LeMoult of member station GBH reports the case heard in federal court on Tuesday as one of many challenges to funding cuts at the National Institutes of Health.
CRAIG LEMOULT, BYLINE: The federal government is appealing a district judge's ruling last summer that said the NIH broke the law when it terminated hundreds of grants related to areas of research the Trump administration doesn't care for, like racial disparities and transgender issues. Olga Akselrod is an ACLU attorney representing the scientists and health organizations that brought this suit.
OLGA AKSELROD: There's very little question that what NIH did was unlawful. Most of the issues that were argued today in court were about jurisdiction, but we feel strongly that we made some very good arguments on that front and are hopeful that those will carry the day.
LEMOULT: The NIH has actually restored many of those grants, but a successful appeal could have implications for future cuts. A spokesperson for the NIH said they don't comment on litigation. Just a day earlier in the same courthouse, another appeals court upheld a ruling that blocked the Trump administration from cutting billions of research dollars by capping payments for indirect research costs. Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey says she wants to see more funding restored. Healey says she talked in October with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
MAURA HEALEY: He told me that no clinical trials have been stopped and that no patients had been impacted. And he challenged me to prove him otherwise.
LEMOULT: On Tuesday, Healey sent Kennedy a letter citing a November article published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. That paper found 74,000 clinical study participants have been affected by NIH funding cuts.
HEALEY: And those include clinical trials on things like colorectal cancer, strokes, gestational diabetes, depression.
LEMOULT: Healey's letter says 18 clinical trials and 13,000 patients have been affected just in Massachusetts.
For NPR News, I'm Craig LeMoult in Boston.
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