That decision shut down work on everything from mobile health apps to rural asthma triggers—projects tied to that same pilot grant. Rosen and his colleagues watched as a portfolio of studies, built over years, unraveled in weeks.
“You cut off young investigators, ideas dry up.”
Jessica Chertow, MHIR’s Vice President of Research, has said plainly that these pilot funds were the bridge for junior researchers into larger breakthroughs. Without that seed money, the next wave of Maine’s scientific contributions might never get born.
Meanwhile, at Maine’s CDC, the damage has already reached the frontlines. Forty public health workers were laid off in March after $91 million in federal HHS funding vanished. Those workers staffed vaccine clinics, tracked outbreaks, and supported long-term care facilities.
One former disease investigator described being let go by automated email. No notice. No reasoning.
“This isn’t just about science. It’s about public safety.”
Across the state, labs are scrambling to come up with “Plan B.” But there’s no private funder ready to pick up the NIH’s slack, no state agency with $20 million lying around. That’s why Maine’s Attorney General joined 21 others to sue the administration, calling the cuts “crippling.”
And while courts stalled one aspect—the cap on overhead—many targeted grants, like the one pulled from MHIR for mentioning “diversity,” remain canceled.
There’s a human toll here that doesn’t show up on a spreadsheet.
At Jackson Lab, nearly 1,700 employees rely on federal grants to keep the doors open and the research moving. At MDIBL, the NIH cap could mean eliminating student internships and cutting staff.
“Every lab in Maine now has a Plan B.”
Graduate students are rethinking their careers. Some early-career scientists are looking for exit ramps. And for patients—especially those in clinical trials—it could mean losing access to treatments that aren’t available anywhere else.
A Maine cancer survivor, interviewed last month, said the trial that saved her life wouldn’t exist under this new regime. “Others might not get that chance,” she said.
So here’s the new reality.
If your research mentions the wrong word—“equity,” “hesitancy,” “climate”—it might get flagged.
If your lab relies on indirect support to pay the electric bill or fix a centrifuge, it might not be able to operate.
If you’re a scientist in Maine, you’re not just competing for grants anymore. You’re navigating a political minefield.
“This is not politics as usual. It’s a dismantling of scientific infrastructure.”
And yet, the researchers show up. They write the grants. Train the students. Keep the work going with whatever funds remain.
They do it because the alternative is giving up.
They do it because the next cure, the next breakthrough, the next saved life could still happen—if someone is there to make it.