The new National Institutes of Health policy would strip research groups of hundreds of millions of dollars to cover so-called indirect expenses of studying Alzheimer’s, cancer, heart disease and a host of other illnesses — anything from clinical trials of new treatments to basic lab research that is the foundation for discoveries.

Legal experts say the proposed cuts violate federal law and are unlikely to survive a legal challenge by states.

Judge Angel Kelley kept in place an order blocking the Trump administration from implementing a 15% cap on NIH indirect cost payments