The US Supreme Court, splitting 5–4, lifted a lower-court injunction that had blocked the Trump administration from terminating National Institutes of Health grants it deemed inconsistent with the president’s directives on diversity, equity and inclusion. The order allows officials to freeze roughly $783 million in funding for more than 1,700 research projects while litigation continues. Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined four other conservatives to form the majority, writing in a concurring opinion that challenges to cancelled grants belong in the Court of Federal Claims. Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the court’s three liberal justices, arguing the funding should remain intact pending full review. Although the justices cleared the way for the grant cancellations, they left undisturbed the lower court’s decision voiding the NIH guidance documents that implemented the policy, clouding how future cuts might be carried out. The grants targeted for termination cover studies in areas including HIV prevention, Alzheimer’s disease and women’s health. Sixteen Democratic-led states, public-health groups and individual researchers contend that ending the projects will cause “incalculable losses” and violates the Administrative Procedure Act as well as anti-discrimination laws. US District Judge William Young had agreed, calling the government’s actions “breathtakingly arbitrary,” but his ruling is now largely on hold. Thursday’s order marks another Supreme Court victory for President Trump’s broader campaign to dismantle federal DEI initiatives. The underlying lawsuits will proceed in lower courts, and plaintiffs said they are evaluating additional legal avenues to preserve the cancelled research.