A Harvard research scientist who once faced the loss of his own federal research funding has built a database now tracking $177 billion in disrupted federal grants across the country. The tool, called Lost Funds, estimates that nearly 10% of all federal discretionary spending has been canceled, frozen, delayed, or otherwise disrupted since the funding turmoil began.
Scott Delaney started what would become the tracker as a simple Google spreadsheet in May 2025, after his own study on environmental factors and neurodegenerative disease at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health lost its federal grant. That spreadsheet grew into Grant Witness, a database now used by journalists, universities, congressional staffers, and lawyers to track terminated, frozen, reinstated, and delayed grants at the individual award level. Lost Funds is a nationwide database tracking disrupted federal grants.
Delaney told the Globe that Lost Funds offers a broader view of federal funding disruptions across the country. The database also tracks lawsuits filed to recover lost funds, and has logged 27 such cases so far, including one filed in Northern California by the ACLU challenging NIH's screening of grants for disfavored viewpoints. Massachusetts is one of 26 states that have filed lawsuits over disrupted funding, per the same account.
Massachusetts Alone Has Lost $6 Billion
In Massachusetts, Lost Funds has tracked $6 billion in disrupted federal funding, with an estimated $2.45 billion restored so far. The funding was destined for 76 nonprofits, 70 local governments, 40 colleges and universities, and 164 other recipients across the state. The disruptions have touched health and biomedical research, education, disaster relief, environmental programs, transportation, food assistance, and other public services, the Globe reports.
Federal funding disruptions have continued. University-wide funding freezes have ceased, but federal grants are still being terminated or scrutinized for alignment with administration priorities, leaving researcher uncertainty in place even as specific policies shift, according to the Globe's reporting.
A class action filed by 17 researchers on September 16 challenges NIH grant screening rules.
Fewer Grants Despite Flat Federal Spending
NIH funding overall is closer to last year's levels, but the agency had awarded 47,744 grants as of August 29, compared with a 2021–2024 average of 62,991 awards at that point—a difference of more than 15,000. Drug Discovery News attributes the reduced number of new awards largely to NIH accelerating multiyear funding. Active NIH awards declined 24% by late August, and early-career investigator grant success rates dropped from 26% in 2024 to 19% in 2025, according to Drug Discovery News.
The reduction in grant numbers could pose risks to research and drug discovery.
A Push to Centralize Grant Decisions
White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought is seeking to centralize control over agency decision-making, and the administration was reported to be considering an executive order that would create political review over NIH grants; the White House did not confirm that such an order was being developed. Reporting from BMJ indicates Vought was asked to draft an order and that Trump was reportedly creating a board, an effort that has drawn pushback from congressional appropriators. Congress previously rejected an earlier proposal to consolidate NIH's 27 institutes and cut its overall budget by 40 percent, per the same report.
The instability has not been limited to research grants. In January, the federal government abruptly notified more than 2,100 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration grantees that their awards, totaling $2 billion, were terminated, before reversing course and reinstating the funds within 24 hours following widespread public pushback, according to LearningWell Magazine. A separate study by UC San Diego researchers, published in The Lancet Regional Health – Americas, found that federal grant cancellations targeting health equity and gender identity disproportionately disrupted the career trajectories of minority scientists and researchers from historically underrepresented communities, according to UC San Diego.
Federal funding disruptions have included cancellations, freezes and delays.
