The National Institutes of Health announced on Friday that it would be capping a type of funding for medical research at hospitals, universities, medical schools and other scientific institutions in an effort to save billions of dollars.

The attorneys general of Maryland and 21 other states sued the Trump administration and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on Monday, alleging they illegally cut funding for crucial medical and public health research.

The planned $4 billion cut in funding for scientific inquiry to the nation’s universities and academic medical institutions will have devastating consequences on research into treatments for such conditions as diabetes,

Senate Appropriations Committee ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., wrote in a statement the NIH policy change amounts to “an indiscriminate funding cut for research institutions across the country that will be nothing short of catastrophic for so much of the lifesaving research patients and families are counting on.”

Efforts by the Trump administration to drastically cut federal investments in medical research are threatening to kneecap major research institutions and stifle scientific progress to combat chronic illnesses.