On Jun. 25, 2025, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) moved to reinstate about 900 grants that a judge last week ruled had been canceled illegally because their topics, ranging from vaccine hesitancy or promoting diversity in the scientific workforce, had been blacklisted by President Donald Trump’s administration. The reinstatements are an even more dramatic response to the ruling than the pause on new terminations that NIH grants staff learned about on Tuesday.

The grant restorations, announced in an internal memo, follow the 16 June decision from Judge William Young of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts on two lawsuits filed by 16 state attorneys general and several researchers and scientific groups challenging the terminations.

Since January, NIH has canceled as many as 2300 grants in response to Trump’s executive orders banning federal funds for topics such as diversity, equity, and inclusion; racial health disparities; and transgender health.

After Young declined to stay the order on June 24, senior NIH official Michelle Bulls told grants management staff later that day not to terminate any additional grants. Then in an email sent at 1:20 p.m. the previous day, and viewed by Science, Bulls wrote that an attached list of terminated awards “must be reinstated, as soon as practicable.” Upcoming payments for awards that were going to be terminated “must proceed” as well, the memo states.

The memo describes the list as “projects identified by the plaintiffs” in the lawsuit, which apparently refers to the same list of more than 900 awards that Young ordered reinstated.