On March 27, 2025, citing priorities to reduce agency budget costs and eliminate redundancy among sub-agencies, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it would be undergoing a significant restructuring, including cutting 20,000 jobs largely from public health agencies. 

On March 4, 2025, in response to a lawsuit by several civil rights organizations and individuals against the federal government’s policy directives on gender-affirming care, a federal court issued a partial block of Executive Order 14187 titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation” and Executive Order 14168 titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”

On February 7, 2025, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that it will eliminate negotiated indirect cost rates for federal grants to organizations for research purposes. According to the Supplemental Guidance NOT-OD-25-068 (the Guidance), the NIH will, instead, set a “standard indirect rate” of 15% for all NIH grant awards for indirect costs “in lieu of a separately negotiated rate for indirect costs in every grant.”