The Trump administration is cutting billions of dollars in biomedical research funding, alarming academic leaders who said it would imperil their universities and medical centers and drawing swift rebukes from Democrats who predicted dire consequences for scientific research.

The move, announced Friday night by the National Institutes of Health, drastically cuts NIH’s funding for “indirect” costs related to research. These are the administrative requirements, facilities and other operations that many scientists say are essential but that some Republicans have claimed are superfluous.