Johns Hopkins to lay off 2,200 workers as it reels from Trump’s USAID cuts

Dive Brief:

• Johns Hopkins University is moving to cut over 2,200 jobs, the largest layoffs in its history, according to a university spokesperson.
• The layoffs are tied directly to the Trump administration’s unilateral cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development, which brought an $800 million funding hit to Johns Hopkins.
• The job cuts include 1,975 international positions across 44 countries as well as 247 in the U.S, the spokesperson said. Another 29 international and 78 domestic employees will be furloughed with a reduced schedule. 

Dive Insight:

Earlier in March, Johns Hopkins President Ron Daniels revealed the depth of the funding gap wrought by the Trump administration’s suspension of foreign aid via executive order and efforts to gut USAID without congressional approval. Daniels said then that the university would have to wind down its projects funded by USAID grants.

Employees in USAID-funded positions at Johns Hopkins have worked to “care for mothers and infants, fight disease, provide clean drinking water, and advance countless other critical, life-saving efforts around the world,” a university spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

The affected jobs set for elimination are in its medical school; the Bloomberg School of Public Health, which includes the Center for Communication Programs; and Jhpiego, a nonprofit affiliate that provides medical care abroad. 

The decimation of USAID has been challenged in court. On March 10, a federal judge issued a partial preliminary injunction in the case, saying the cuts likely violated the Constitution. 

“The Executive not only claims his constitutional authority to determine how to spend appropriated funds, but usurps Congress’s exclusive authority to dictate whether the funds should be spent in the first place,” according to the decision from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Daniels previously told the campus community that federal funding cuts and the resulting chaos would likely bring reductions to the university’s personnel and budgets. 

“Over the past six weeks, we have experienced a fast and far-reaching cascade of executive orders and agency actions affecting higher education and federally sponsored research,” Daniels said in early March. “What began as stop work orders or pauses in grant funding allocations has morphed into cancellations and terminations.”

In addition to the USAID fallout, Johns Hopkins faces many millions in shortfalls from the National Institutes of Health’s move to cap funding for institutions’ indirect research costs at 15%. 

The university is among those suing NIH to block the cap, which plaintiffs say violates federal law, regulation and agency authority. In court papers, Laurent Heller, Johns Hopkins’ executive vice president for finance and administration, said the institution received over $1 billion in funding from NIH in fiscal 2024. Of that, $281.4 million covers indirect costs, one of the largest of which is physical space. 

The funding helps support clinical trials for treatments related to cancer, pediatrics, heart, lungs, brain, liver and other areas, as well as other research and services. 

“The proposal to cap indirect cost rates at 15% could end, seriously jeopardize, or require significant scaling back of the projects and infrastructure described above, as well as hundreds more projects of importance for life-saving medical discoveries, treatments, cares, and cures,” Heller said.

There again, a court has ruled that the administration likely overstepped its authority. A judge overseeing several cases against NIH issued an injunction in March compelling the agency to keep paying negotiated rates for indirect costs as the case continues. 

The funding cuts represent a risk of “halting life-saving clinical trials, disrupting the development of innovative medical research and treatment, and shuttering of research facilities, without regard for current patient care,” the judge wrote.

Harvard University, Columbia University, Northwestern University and many other higher ed institutions have announced hiring freezes and cutbacks amid uncertainty over NIH and other federal funding sources.