DOGE's next phase

Politico

4 days ago

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Driving the Day
WHAT'S NEXT FOR DOGE? The Department of Government Efficiency is continuing its work — even without its leader, Elon Musk, albeit now in a quieter way, POLITICO's Robin Bravender, Danny Nguyen and Sophia Cai report.
'DOGE is at work. They're not going away,' the Office of Management and Budget's director, Russ Vought, told Fox News recently. 'I talk to them every single day.'
Yet, in recent weeks, some agency leaders, including those at HHS, have publicly broken with DOGE directives, a phenomenon that could become more widespread as Musk steps away from his role. Today is his last day with the White House.
In April, leaders of the National Institutes of Health rolled back DOGE directives that instructed staffers to send weekly emails outlining their productivity and limited purchases and travel on company cards, according to messages obtained by POLITICO.
That prompted some staffers to suspect the agency's recently confirmed director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and perhaps others at HHS, were willing to break with Musk and DOGE.
Bhattacharya portrayed himself as powerless against DOGE's mass workforce terminations because they landed the same day he joined the agency in April, though he said he would reinstate some procurement staffers who shouldn't have been terminated.
The movement at the NIH and other HHS offices weeks after illustrates a more complicated portrait.
Since the start of the second Trump administration, at least six DOGE officials with NIH credentials have descended on the agency, and some have slashed scientific research grants and conducted staff reorganizations, terminations and other purported cost-cutting measures, according to an NIH staffer familiar with the matter and granted anonymity out of concerns they would face retribution.
Bhattacharya and other HHS leaders have done little to stave off those deeper cuts, said the NIH staffer and another institute staffer who were granted anonymity out of fear of reprisal.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 'strongly supports DOGE's mission and views the team as a critical partner in restoring public trust in our health institutions,' said HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon. 'Cutting waste, fraud and abuse at HHS remains a top priority.'
The White House, DOGE and Musk did not respond to requests for comment.
In July, NIH is expected to submit plans to dramatically consolidate the NIH's information technology departments, where more than a dozen teams are based in various suboffices, even as it remains unclear how much work contractors can backfill, the staffers said.
Now, employees have been charged with essentially firing each other by developing plans to slash down the IT departments, said the two staffers.
'DOGE is still hungry,' one of the NIH staffers said. 'We've still got to feed the f–ing dog.'
WELCOME TO FRIDAY PULSE. Quick housekeeping note: This is my (Chelsea's) last edition of Pulse as I am leaving POLITICO for a new opportunity. It's been a pleasure being in your inboxes each morning. Thank you for all the tips, scoops and feedback — please continue to send them to my wonderful colleague Kelly at [e-mail] and follow along @Kelhoops.
AROUND THE AGENCIES
STATE OF THE RIF — CDC layoffs planned for early June are being paused in the wake of a preliminary injunction, two employees at the agency, granted anonymity for fear of retribution, confirmed to POLITICO's Sophie Gardner.
CDC employees who were sent termination notices in April received an email from the agency's Office of Human Resources on Thursday, informing them that, because of a preliminary injunction, HHS 'is staying further action on any existing Reduction in Force (RIF) notices, including final separation of employees, at this time.'
The laid-off employees will remain on paid administrative leave 'or in their current employment status' until further notice, the email said.
An HHS spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Background: On April 1, amid a massive restructuring of HHS, around 18 percent of the CDC's workforce received termination notices. But legal challenges have complicated the reduction in force and the HHS reorganization, meaning the vast majority of those employees are still technically employed at the CDC, with most remaining on administrative leave.
Key context: On May 22, Judge Susan Illston of the federal district court in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction that bars the administration from carrying out the reduction in force across 22 agencies — including HHS — that are defendants in the case. Federal employee unions, nonprofits and local governments are the plaintiffs.
The email sent to CDC employees cites Illston's injunction as the reason for the decision.
MAHA REPORT CORRECTED — The White House blamed 'formatting issues' for errors in the citations of the recently released Make America Healthy Again report after a media report found studies in it that do not exist.
'We have complete confidence in [Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] and his team at HHS. I understand there were some formatting issues with the MAHA report,' White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday.
Her remarks came after NOTUS reported that seven of the sources cited in the report, which said children's health is in crisis and blamed chemicals, lack of exercise and ultraprocessed foods, don't exist.
The report now lists five of its citations as 'corrected' or 'updated,' though that doesn't include the citations NOTUS reported as false.
'Some of the hundreds of citations in the report were formatted incorrectly or mistakenly referenced something other than what was actually intended,' a White House spokesperson told Pulse. 'That said, the content of the report is fully substantiated, and there is nothing in there that cannot be backed up; we did not conjure up any facts. Report has been corrected now.'
REPORT: IMPROVE GRANT OVERSIGHT — The NIH must do a better job of providing oversight of ongoing research grants that the agency has awarded to outside entities, the Government Accountability Office said in a report released Thursday.
The report comes as the federal government slashes a number of NIH-funded grants to research institutions and universities, including those focused on diversity, equity and inclusion. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has bemoaned bureaucratic bloat at his department for failing to focus its work on the root causes of chronic disease.
According to Thursday's report, the NIH spent more than $35 billion supporting 65,000 grants to external entities in fiscal 2023.
However, the GAO found that NIH program officers, tasked with tracking recipients' progress, didn't always close out awards when recipients failed to file final reports within a year of the project's end, as required by policy.
As of Aug. 2024, nearly 1,000 final reports, or about 0.2 percent of awards made from fiscal 2014 through fiscal 2024, were missing.
Their recommendations: GAO called on the NIH to identify the cause of the missing reports, develop an informational resource on how to manage unused award money and require NIH centers to track all unused funds. The NIH agreed with all three recommendations.
In Congress
FIRST IN PULSE: ANTI-ABORTION GROUP TARGETS GOP — A major anti-abortion group will launch a monthlong campaign in June to urge Senate Republicans to keep anti-abortion language in the sweeping megabill that passed the House.
Students for Life Action plans to target 12 GOP senators who they call 'friends and sometimes foes,' the group's president, Kristan Hawkins, said in a statement, 'all of whom are expressing reluctance on the need to set aside our differences to prioritize getting abortion vendors out of our healthcare spending.'
Background: The One Big, Beautiful Bill Act narrowly passed the House this month with language in it that would eliminate Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood. However, the bill will likely undergo major changes in the Senate when lawmakers return in June. Federal funding already can't fund abortion services.
The Republican senators being targeted by the group are:
— Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.)— Susan Collins (Maine)— Ron Johnson (Wis.)— Mike Lee (Utah)— Mitch McConnell (Ky.)— Lisa Murkowski (Alaska)— Rand Paul (Ky.)— Rick Scott (Fla.)— Dan Sullivan (Alaska)— John Thune (S.D.)— Thom Tillis (N.C.)— Todd Young (Ind.)
Names in the News
Kevin Barstow is joining O'Melveny as a partner in its health care practice group and congressional investigations team. He was senior counsel and special assistant to the president in the Biden White House.
The Congressional Budget Office has named its panel of health advisers, who will advise the agency on its analysis of the cost of health care policy. The members are Katherine Baicker, Michael Chernew, Jeffrey Clemens, Heather Dlugolenski, Marisa Domino, Erin Fraher, Craig Garthwaite, Darrell Gaskin, John Haupert, Anne Karl, Lisa Lee, Thomas Lee, Patricia MacTaggart, David Meltzer, Sergio Santiviago, Kosali Simon, Neeraj Sood, Cori Uccello and Melanie Whittington.
WHAT WE'RE READING
NBC reports on how a new Covid variant could impact cases this summer.
POLITICO's Ruth Reader reports on a new CMMI official leading AI.