How Elon Musk Unleashed Chaos Inside the NIH
As DOGE officials continue to root around the NIH, patient advocacy groups have rushed to caution the White House about the potential impact. (Illustration by The Free Press, images via Alamy)
A frenzy of changes by DOGE underlings is colliding with resistance from the agency’s scientists and top officials.
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As part of a grant-canceling spree six weeks into the Trump administration, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) cut a $200,000 program for Seattle Children’s Hospital to study sex education among transgender youth. But under pressure from Democratic state officials in Washington who sued the president, the NIH quietly reinstated the funding in late March.
The Trump administration hadn’t backed down from its opposition to “gender-affirming care.” In reality, the reversal was the result of a chaotic power struggle between Elon Musk’s DOGE and top officials at the NIH, the largest biomedical research agency in the world.
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