After Her Grants Got Cut, This Researcher Is Suing The NIH

FLORA LICHTMAN: Hi. I’m Flora Lichtman. And you are listening to Science Friday.

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Today on the podcast, a researcher who’s fighting back against the federal cuts to science.

Initially, I was feeling so helpless, and just like, this is the end of my career. Then I got angry, and then I said, I’m going to do something about this. And now, I’m suing the NIH.

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Since January, the National Institutes of Health has made sweeping cuts to science. They add up to hundreds of millions, possibly billions of dollars, of research funding lost. Some scientists are fighting back, taking the NIH to court. And for the first time in months, they’re seeing some small victories. Last week, a Boston judge ruled that many of these cuts were illegal, and said they needed to be reinstated. And this week, internal memos show the NIH might be walking back some of those cancelations, and stopping further cuts.

A scientist at the center of one of these lawsuits is Dr. Katie Edwards. She’s the director of the Interpersonal Violence Research Lab at the University of Michigan. We talked to her on Thursday. Katie, welcome to Science Friday.

KATIE EDWARDS: Thank you for having me.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Katie, you study violence prevention. And I want to hear more about that in a minute. But since March, you’ve lost eight grants, millions of dollars worth of funding. What’s been the fallout for your research program?

KATIE EDWARDS: So we received our first termination in March. And since then, I think devastating and catastrophic are the only ways I know how to describe it, or the simplest ways. First, it’s impacted staff. We have over 50 staff. And they will be essentially without a job here in the near future. And many of them are already at reduced hours. And that’s really devastating.

I mean, it’s completely paralyzed our research. We have– it’s been chaos trying to scramble to figure out how do we pause a study that we’re in the middle of an intervention, for example, trying to prevent suicide and depression among trans and gender diverse youth to a study with over 3,000 sexual minority men. How do we stop this study? So it’s just been utter chaos because we can’t just pull the plug.

It’s like, someone’s on the operating table. You don’t just walk out and leave them right in the middle of surgery. So we have an ethical obligation. Beyond those two things, I think more broadly, the impact to public health should be on the brink of groundbreaking scientific discovery. And then to just say, well, so much for that.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Tell me a little bit about your work, what you do.

KATIE EDWARDS: In the research lab, we essentially develop programs with community leadership that help us prevent sexual and various forms of violence. We also look at the promotion of mental health, which we know goes hand in hand with violence prevention. And we do this work with the most vulnerable youth, families, and communities in this nation. So we work with youth and communities of color, Indigenous communities, LGBTQ+ youth, and we find in our interventions that we’re making a difference.

We see that we’re reducing violence. We see that we’re reducing depression. We see that we’re reducing substance use. So that’s what we focus on in the lab, and which is really just been completely dismantled in the last few months.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Why were you told that these grants were terminated?

KATIE EDWARDS: The letters varied a little bit. But some focused on DEI, and how DEI is bad, DEI is unscientific. Others focused more on gender ideology, and how gender ideology is unscientific, and doesn’t benefit most Americans. And all essentially said something along the lines of a waste of taxpayer money.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So the rationale that we have heard from the Trump administration is this sort of war on woke ideology. And it sounds like that’s what the NIH nodded to in the letters terminating your work. What’s your reaction to that?

KATIE EDWARDS: There are so many emotions. I mean, the first one, the second one, the third one. I think, shock in some ways that the National Institutes of Health, the number-one biomedical agency in the world, was sending something that was so scientifically incorrect, that was so hateful. I have moments where I think, gosh, if people could just see what we do. If people could see what we do, and the impact that our work has.

I feel like this– so many words have become weaponized, and they’ve become like these dirty, naughty words when we’re literally trying to help kids who experienced a disproportionate burden of violence to live lives that are safe, or that they can be healthy, and whether they can be happy. And initially, I was feeling so helpless and just like, this is the end of my career. This is the end of all the work we’ve done to prevent violence, improve youth outcomes. This is all ending. And then I got angry and then I said, I’m going to do something about this. And now, I’m suing the NIH.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Yeah, how did you decide, I’m going to fight this in court? Was there a breaking point?

KATIE EDWARDS: There was. I was for a couple of days, I was just so down. I mean, really, really down, and crying. Crying a lot. And but also in panic mode. What am I going to do? What am I going to do? In shock. And after a couple of days, I was like, I’m going to fight this. I don’t know how I’m going to fight this, but I’m going to fight this because I have to. And then I was like, there’s all these lawsuits right now. Can we file a lawsuit? Because I don’t understand how this is legal.

So a mutual colleague said, Protect Democracy is doing some fact finding, some information gathering. Would you be willing to talk to someone at Protect Democracy? And I said, absolutely. I’ll talk to anyone who can help. It felt like for the first time, like, maybe– if this goes forward, like, this has teeth. When they decided that they were going to move forward, and file, and that they asked me if I would be a named plaintiff, I said, absolutely.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Did it feel risky? Were you concerned about being a named plaintiff?

KATIE EDWARDS: I was. And I still have moments where I am. I’ve received death threats before for my research and get hateful messages every now and then. But to me, I had to do it. I have to stand up for what’s right. This isn’t just about me getting our grants back. This is about fighting for justice and public health research. This is about fighting for kids and families that don’t have voices, and that this administration is trying to erase.

So absolutely. There was some hesitation, some fear. But I knew that I had to do this. And if I didn’t do it, it would be something I regretted. And I couldn’t be prouder to be part of this lawsuit.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Your lawsuit argues that it’s discriminatory to end grants based on forbidden terms like gender identity and DEI. And it also argues that the process by which these grants were canceled violates the law. A federal judge in Massachusetts recently sided with you. Is that correct?

KATIE EDWARDS: Yeah. I mean, last Monday was a day that I will never forget. To hear the judge say, I’ve been at the bench for 40 years, over 40 years, and I have never in my career seen racial discrimination and discrimination against LGBTQ Americans like this. And I mean, his final words are, have we no shame? Has our country fallen so low?

And I actually– I was sitting at home watching it on Zoom. And my wife was sitting next to me holding my hand. And I just cried, and cried, and cried because in that moment, I felt like I could breathe deeply for the first time. It was the first time in a few months I had a lot of hope for our country, and because I’d been feeling pretty unhopeful.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So the judge sided with you. And then just in the last few days, the NIH reportedly sent a memo halting any new grant terminations. And according to Science magazine, they sent a second email on Wednesday saying that the canceled grants in your lawsuit must be reinstated. So has the money started flowing again yet?

KATIE EDWARDS: So I haven’t seen any money yet from the terminated grants. I did receive a notice of award today for a new grant that we had done all the paperwork for back in December to receive. And then it was just kind of radio silence for a few– well, more than a few months. And we did finally receive that official notice of award today.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Just today.

KATIE EDWARDS: Just today. But and in terms of the other terminated grants, we have not. But I was so elated when I saw that news. I mean, it’s such a emotional roller coaster. And I’m just really happy that today, there’s good news. And it’s just surreal to have been part of this. I mean, I’m getting a lot of people saying, oh my gosh, thank you. You’re part of the reason this is happening. And it’s just–

FLORA LICHTMAN: Wow.

KATIE EDWARDS: What a wild time to be alive.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What happens next with the lawsuit?

KATIE EDWARDS: Well, I hope first and foremost, we get our terminated grants back really quickly. And then my understanding is the federal government was planning on appealing. They alluded to that previously that– I know that my attorneys, or our attorneys, are determined to win. And we’ll go all the way to the Supreme Court. It sounded like the government was prepared to do that. And maybe they still are. I don’t know. It’s just to keep up with it all, honestly.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Yeah. What is your message to other scientists?

KATIE EDWARDS: One of the things that I hear a lot is this need to pivot, and this need to submit grants where we’re trying to cover up what we’re doing. So things like, even though I’m really interested in the role of structural racism on health inequities, I’m going to call it stress and health problems. It’s just, it scares me. What we need to do is we need to resist. We need to fight for science. We need to fight for doing science that has integrity, and that’s evidence driven, and that it respects the dignity of people.

And so I think my cry and call to scientists is, don’t pivot. We need to be fighting back and not bending the knee just to get grants funded, because I’m really, really worried that if we start doing that, we’re going to make this a lot worse, and it’s going to take a lot more work to get out of this.

I think when I talk to my younger staff, and students, and postdocs, and staff who want to go on into academia and research, I mean, so many of them want to give up. And I get it. I mean, I’m a full professor. I’m a full professor. And I had moments where I’ve literally thought about changing my career.

But I won’t. And I won’t let them. I tell them, this is horrible. This is devastating. This is traumatic. And we have to allow ourselves time to feel sad, to feel down, to cry. But we have to pick ourselves back up, because if we fall apart, nothing’s going to get better. As much as there are moments where I feel like I just can’t do this anymore, I will never stop fighting.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Katie, good luck. We’ll be following this, maybe, as you say, all the way to the Supreme Court.

KATIE EDWARDS: I know. I was talking to my dad the other day, and he was like, I can’t believe you’re going to the Supreme Court of the United States. Katie Edwards from Alabama going to SCOTUS suing the NIH.

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FLORA LICHTMAN: Dr. Katie Edwards is the director of the Interpersonal Violence Research Laboratory and a professor of social work at the University of Michigan. Special thanks to Kenneth Parreno at Protect Democracy for speaking with us.

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FLORA LICHTMAN: I’m Flora Lichtman. Thanks for listening.

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