The Scene

Funding & Grant Cancellation

Since January 2025 the federal government has frozen, terminated, cancelled and conditioned money it had promised, across nearly every domestic program. This is not five separate disputes. It is one campaign fought on five fronts, and the litigation has moved as fast as the cuts.

51+ funding cases tracked, and counting

5 distinct fronts, one strategy

18 months of continuous litigation

50 states drawn in, many suing as a coalition

How it unfolded

January 2025
It starts government-wide. An Office of Management and Budget directive freezes federal financial assistance, and a multistate coalition sues within days in the District of Rhode Island, where the court orders the funds released and later enforces that order.
Winter and spring 2025
The freeze gives way to targeted terminations. Agencies begin cancelling grants already awarded, in health, education, the humanities and national service, and each wave produces its own litigation.
Early 2025
A cap on indirect-cost rates for federal research grants opens a separate front, drawing in universities and academic medical centers whose laboratories run on that overhead.
Through 2025 and 2026
The administration shifts from cutting money to conditioning it, offering grants only to recipients who accept new immigration, elections and diversity terms. States and cities call the conditions coercion without statutory footing.
July 2026
The pattern repeats with FEMA. Sixteen states plus two governors sue over new conditions on disaster-relief grant funds, filed once again in Rhode Island. The forum choice is not an accident.

The five fronts

Each front is its own tracker, with every case and order on a timeline. Together they are the measure of the thing.

3 The OMB Funding Freeze The opening move. A January 2025 OMB directive paused federal financial assistance across the government, drawing an immediate nationwide challenge and a court order to release the money. Open the tracker → 10 Grant Conditioning Money offered only if the recipient accepts new conditions, reaching into immigration, elections and diversity policy. States and cities argue the strings are attached without authority. Open the tracker → 16 Grant Terminations The largest front. Awards already made were cancelled mid-stream across health, education, science and national service, sending grantees to court to reverse the terminations. Open the tracker → 7 Grant Cancellation Cancellations targeting specific programs and recipients, where the fight is whether the agency followed the statute and its own rules before pulling the funds. Open the tracker → 8 The Research Indirect-Cost Cap A flat cap on the indirect-cost rate paid on federal research grants, which universities and medical centers say would gut the overhead that keeps labs running. Open the tracker →

44 proceedings are on these five trackers today. The count above is higher because cases enter the docket faster than they are placed on a timeline, and new ones are filed most weeks.