Trump's 2027 Budget Targets NIH: $5 Billion Cut and Major Restructuring Proposed

The White House has proposed a significant $5 billion reduction to the National Institutes of Health's budget for fiscal year 2027, alongside a sweeping plan to consolidate and eliminate several of its key institutes. This request, part of President Trump's budget proposal, signals a major potential shift in federal biomedical research priorities and funding architecture, though it faces immediate skepticism from a bipartisan Congress.

The detailed proposal seeks to shrink the NIH from 27 institutes and centers down to 22. It specifically calls for the elimination of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, the Fogarty International Center, and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. Furthermore, it proposes merging the institutes focused on drug and alcohol abuse research into a new National Institute of Substance Use and Addiction Research and relocating the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to the CDC. The budget also seeks cuts to ARPA-H, the agency tasked with funding high-risk, high-reward scientific breakthroughs.

While the budget request outlines a clear administrative vision, its path through Congress is highly uncertain. Lawmakers from both parties have historically protected and even increased NIH funding, viewing it as a critical driver of medical innovation and public health. The proposed dismantling of institutes dedicated to global health, health disparities, and complementary medicine is likely to face intense scrutiny and political resistance, making the full $5 billion cut and structural overhaul improbable to pass in its current form.