RFK Jr. said ‘we’re not cutting science’ or research. That’s Pants on Fire!

President Donald Trump and other administration officials have touted drastic reductions in government spending and size, including at the Department of Health and Human Services. Under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s purview, the department moved earlier this year to lay off about 10,000 employees and end millions in grant funding.

In front of a George Washington University audience, however, Kennedy downplayed the budget slashing. His thesis: The administration cut bureaucracy, not research.

"We’re not cutting science," Kennedy said Nov. 17. "We’re not cutting research." 

Some studies were "paused" as the agency cut its workforce earlier in the year, but the studies were renewed, so it would be a mistake to say they were cut, he said. And, he added, clinical trials weren’t abandoned — they all continue to be funded. 

"We’re cutting bureaucrats," Kennedy said. 

News reports, HHS communications and Kennedy’s past statements don’t bear this out.

(C-SPAN)

Kennedy’s agency terminated millions of dollars worth of federal grants, including hundreds of National Institutes of Health research grants. 

"NIH is taking action to terminate research funding that is not aligned with NIH and HHS priorities," HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard told KFF Health News in April. We contacted HHS to ask what Kennedy meant when he said the agency hadn’t cut research and received no response. 

More than 70 researchers told ProPublica they were unable to continue their projects because of the grant terminations. At least 30 researchers said the grant terminations forced abrupt ends to clinical research and trials, leaving patients in limbo, ProPublica reported. 

In practice, the cuts meant abandoning more than $800 million worth of research into cancers and viruses that often affect LGBTQ minority groups, setting back efforts to fight sexually transmitted infections, The New York Times reported in May. 

The cuts also halted a yearslong University of California San Francisco clinical trial aiming to assess the financial, emotional and physical impacts of providing guaranteed income to young, Black adults. NIH cut the clinical trial’s funding in March. The research team was unable to conduct its final interviews, analyze the data or share findings with participants and policymakers, Sheri Lippman told the San Francisco Chronicle. Lippman was the project’s principal investigator and is a UCSF medicine professor. 

The Trump administration cut messenger RNA research, too. Kennedy in August said the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority would cancel almost $500 million in investments, affecting 22 projects. HHS promoted the cuts as winding down "mRNA vaccine development."

That cut undermined research — including non-vaccine research. One of the canceled grants, for example, had been awarded to Emory University for nearly $750,000. It would have supported developing a dry powder mRNA antiviral therapy that could be inhaled as a way to treat patients with influenza and COVID-19. 

Grant Witness, a group tracking Trump administration action against scientific research grants in 2025, found that more than 4,400 of NIH grants were stopped. The administration also froze about 1,000 grants, effectively terminating them, said Scott Delaney, one of the scientists who started Grant Witness. 

Before Kennedy’s Nov. 17 remarks, he had acknowledged cutting research, in some cases saying the cuts had been made incorrectly. "About $750,000 of a University of Michigan grant into adolescent diabetes was cut," CBS News’ chief medical correspondent told Kennedy in April. "Did you know that?" 

Kennedy said he didn’t but would look into it. 

"There’s a number of studies that were cut that came to our attention and that did not deserve to be cut and we reinstated them," Kennedy said. "Our purpose is not to reduce any level of scientific research that’s important."

The Trump administration has restored about 52% of terminated NIH grants and 122 frozen grants as of Nov. 19, Grant Witness reported. But about 2,500 grants remain terminated or frozen.

Even cuts that were ultimately reversed harmed research, scientists say

The cuts disrupted hundreds of clinical trials, research shows. 

A JAMA Internal Medicine research letter published in November found that 383 NIH-supported clinical trials lost funding from Feb. 28 to Aug. 15. The grant funding disruptions impacted approximately 1 in 30 clinical trials and more than 74,000 trial participants, researchers said. Those trials were disproportionately based in the Northeastern U.S. or in other countries and mostly studied infectious diseases, prevention or behavioral interventions. 

It wasn’t clear exactly how funding disruptions affected each clinical trial. Ending a grant might not kill research outright. Researchers could potentially secure alternative funding and continue their work. In some cases, research could resume once the government restored its funding. 

Scientists told PolitiFact that funding disruptions harm research, even if it is restored.

"Grant terminations force researchers to stop their studies," Delaney said. 

Researchers might lose contact with study participants, stop data collection or be forced to lay off scientists and other staff.  

"When grants are reinstated, scientists can’t go back in time to collect data that they missed," Delaney said. "You can’t go back and get a blood sample from six weeks ago."

Although a federal judge ordered the NIH to restore hundreds of biomedical research grants, researchers told The Boston Globe that uncertainty and delays marred efforts to restart their work.

Grant funds support scientists, supplies and clinical trials, so merely reinstating a grant cannot undo the harm of a cut, said Joshua Weitz, a University of Maryland biology professor who co-founded the Science and Community Impacts Mapping Project. 

"Research is not a spigot that can be turned on then off then on again without impact," he said. 

Our ruling

Kennedy said administration officials were not cutting science or research. 

Reports of halted research and clinical trials demonstrate otherwise. Although some previously terminated or frozen grants were reinstated, about 2,500 grants remain terminated or frozen. And scientists said the cuts harmed research, even when funding was restored.

We rate Kennedy’s statement Pants on Fire!

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

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