Elon Musk’s DOGE has ordered the Department of Health and Human Services to reduce all of its contract spending by 35% and is wielding enormous influence over what gets cut, according to internal emails and documents sent to employees last week and reviewed by NOTUS.
“HHS divisions shall conduct a comprehensive assessment of all existing contracts for reducing contract costs by a designated dollar value to achieve a reduction of total departmental contract spend by approximately $13.6 billion per fiscal year by April 18, 2025,” one document states. The directive obtained by NOTUS was sent to National Institutes of Health officials involved in contract decisions by NIH’s Office of Logistics and Acquisition Operation.
Savings targets for each HHS division were calculated by applying a 35% reduction target to the 2024 fiscal year contract spend, the document continues.
In a remarkable affirmation of DOGE’s power, included with the directive was a list of NIH contracts that DOGE recommended for either partial or total termination.
“We are asking program areas to carefully consider the items highlighted in orange. If the program disagrees with the recommended action, a very strong justification will be needed,” one email to National Eye Institute employees read. “The justification should cite statutory requirements.”
“We cannot use mission criticality as a justification to not make cuts,” it continues.
The directive document states that requests to maintain contracts recommended for cuts will be reviewed by the NIH director for clearance. Among the cuts urged by DOGE was funding for the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s fellowship program, lab equipment maintenance and acquisition and other administrative support tasks.
HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard said in a statement after this story was published that the 35% reduction is a “strategic initiative across all divisions of HHS, with the goal of cutting unnecessary spending, saving taxpayer dollars, and streamlining operations.”
Hilliard added, “These cuts are designed to ensure that every dollar is used more efficiently while continuing to focus on our core mission of improving public health and services. The savings from these reductions will help redirect resources toward critical programs and strengthen our ability to serve the American people effectively. The goal is clear – reduce waste and maximize the impact of every taxpayer dollar.”
NIH director Jayanta Bhattacharya started working at the agency on Tuesday, and told staff in an email that the reductions in the NIH’s workforce would “have a profound impact on key NIH administrative functions.”
HHS has a budget of nearly $2.6 trillion for fiscal year 2025. The overwhelming majority of those resources — about $2.46 trillion — go to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
An NIH employee told NOTUS that they expect to lose important services like genetic testing, freezer backup systems and genetic counseling to the contract spending cuts. In addition to outside services, many personnel working directly at the NIH are contracted staff since the NIH has a set number of federal positions available. Contracted personnel include many lab and IT employees, the employee said.
“It will be like another reduction in force” to lose contracted staff, the employee said.
The employee told NOTUS that programs were given a deadline of this Monday to respond to the list of dozens of contracts DOGE flagged for immediate termination and to give justifications for ones that they believed should remain funded. Employees were given an April 7 deadline to review all other contracts.
The email outlining proposed cuts acknowledged the rapid turnaround, saying that “while we understand the time constraints, your information should be as complete as possible.”
“We also understand that some of the [contract] data is not accurate,” the email also said, suggesting there could be inactive contracts on the list.
One NIH contract employee said most staff were largely being kept out of the loop.
“The contracts will be slashed by 35%, but nobody seems to know what it means. Nobody seems to know anything, the decisions are made at HHS level,” the employee told NOTUS.
DOGE has already cut billions of dollars worth of HHS contracts, per data listed on the DOGE website. Even before the contract cut directive went out to agency staff, NIH was quietly laying off contract workers. DOGE staffers themselves have been in the agency, where sources told NOTUS they were firing employees on sight.
The department has overseen the Trump administration’s cutting of millions of dollars worth of funding for HIV and cancer research at universities and is working to end billions of dollars of promised funding for state health agencies and substance abuse centers.
At the behest of Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the department is in the process of cutting its staff by more than 20,000 employees, and its employees have been directed to start hacking away at awards that do not fit the priorities of the Trump administration.
Remaining staffers are instructed not to approve new contracts or continue existing ones that relate to climate change, vaccine hesitancy or “countries of concern,” which includes South Africa, according to separate internal guidance sent to the NIH’s grants management staff on March 25 that was obtained by NOTUS.
That document, which is marked “INTERNAL: NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION OUTSIDE THE GOVERNMENT,” details the qualifiers that would put federal grants on the chopping block. “Diversity supplements, diversity fellowships, or conference grant where the purpose of the meeting is diversity” are all prohibited.
Conferences that target “underrepresented groups” must instead broaden to include “all populations” or see their NIH support pulled. The memo notes: “Activities required to comply with NIH inclusion policies are not considered DEI activities.”
It is now the official view of NIH that transgender-related research projects “are often unscientific, have little identifiable return on investment, and do nothing to enhance the health of many Americans,” and are not to be prioritized moving forward.
Agency policy has also been updated so as “not to prioritize research activities that focuses gaining scientific knowledge on why individuals are hesitant to be vaccinated and/or explore ways to improve vaccine interest and commitment.”
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Margaret Manto and Mark Alfred are NOTUS reporters and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellows.