Respected NIH official put on leave, and it's pretty obvious why.
That, and seven other stories we are following in the Trump administration's persistent campaign to weaken our health agencies and our century of leadership in saving lives here and around the world.
Hi everyone. Today’s newsletter covers a lot of ground. We’ve got three in-depth stories, in part thanks to Inside Medicine readers working in the government who bravely came forward with vivid and specific details about the Trump administration’s continued campaign to undermine our health agencies and their workforces. Then, we have five shorter stories which, though brief, are exceedingly important to know about. It’s two or three days’ worth of newsletters packed into one, so feel free to read some of this now, and come back for more later. We are bearing witness here, and we have to do our best to stay on top of things. (Thanks for being here with me to do that). Let’s get to it. But first…
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Respected top NIH official who worked closely with Dr. Fauci placed on leave.
Earlier this month, then-Acting Director of the NIH Dr. Matthew Memoli tapped Dr. Tara Schwetz to help run the Office of Extramural Research. The move came on the eve of the confirmation of the agency’s permanent director. Now, a day after Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was confirmed by the Senate and assumed the permanent position, Dr. Schwetz has been placed on leave, STAT News has reported.
No information has been provided to explain the Schwetz ouster. However, the move is conspicuous, given that Memoli—a Trump appointee—had recently assigned important work to her.
A quick internet search was in order. That query revealed that Dr. Schwetz had co-authored a 2019 peer-reviewed paper on HIV with none other than Dr. Anthony Fauci, a manuscript that only had two authors—which alone implies a close working relationship.
Dr. Schwetz also had nice things to say about Dr. Francis Collins, the former NIH Director under Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden. Schwetz co-authored manuscripts with Collins, including a four-author paper that included her, Collins, Dr. Lawrence Tabak (whose unexpected NIH departure in February made news), as well as another former Biden advisor.
It’s worth noting that Dr. Bhattacharya sued the Biden administration in 2023, claiming top officials had censored his social media posts during the Covid-19 pandemic. (The Supreme Court ruled that he and his co-plaintiffs had not demonstrated any injury, so they left aside whether the administration had actually done anything that violated the First Amendment.) In that case, Bhattacharya and his plaintiffs highlighted specific emails Dr. Collins and Dr. Fauci sent. Outcome aside, it’s pretty clear that, from Bhattacharya’s side at least, there was bad blood here.
So, is the ouster of Dr. Tara Schwetz the beginning of a retribution campaign at the NIH? We are early in Dr. Bhattacharya’s tenure, so moves like this are worth watching. That’s especially so, given that he has publicly espoused the importance of tolerating a diversity of opinions. In his opening remarks during his US Senate confirmation hearing, for example, Dr. Bhattacharya said that, if confirmed, “I will foster a culture where NIH leadership will actively encourage different perspectives and create an environment where scientists – including early career scientists – can express disagreement respectfully.”
Indeed! However, if the removal of Dr. Schwetz has anything to do with her prior professional associations with Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins, it would seemingly suggest that Dr. Bhattacharya’s sworn testimony—not only on the tolerance of, but the importance of respectful disagreement—are perhaps somewhat narrower than his words might have suggested. I hope I’m wrong about that. Time will tell.
FDA update: The parking is so-so, the WiFi is bad, and the campus is a literal mess. Welcome Dr. Makary!
In the two weeks since FDA employees’ prior telework agreements ended, the main campus in Silver Spring, MD has been something of a cluster.
The morning commute is not as bad as many had expected, but that’s because people are arriving from 5am-9am just to beat traffic and security lines. Getting out of there, however, is the pain point. “Leaving campus is like The Hunger Games,” one FDA employee said. “It’s almost impossible to get off campus right now,” another added. I’m hearing that it can easily take 15-20 minutes to leave the garages. It’s getting old.
Then there’s the maintenance. Three FDA employees told me that bathroom cleanliness is an issue because the custodial staffing is not adequate for over 10,000 people. The photo below, taken by an FDA employee and shared with Inside Medicine, indicates that there are simply not enough custodians for the workforce now expected to show up daily.
Next, there’s the internet, which has been a huge pain point for workers trying to get anything done. “The Internet is accessible on my phone today for the first time,” an FDA employee said, “but internet on the computers is still very slow.”
The staff has made their concerns known. In response, as seen below in an internal FDA email shared with Inside Medicine, leadership had one suggestion: use the Guest Wireless network.
It’s a nice idea, except for one tiny problem: the Guest Wireless network—and this is a direct quote from an FDA staffer—“sucks.”
Meanwhile, the Senate confirmed the agency’s new Commissioner, Dr. Marty Makary yesterday. (Marty was the editor-in-chief of MedPage Today, and I am his successor in that role today, I should mention. In that context, we have maintained very cordial communications, despite some philosophical differences.) I asked several FDA staffers what their impression of Marty is, and basically the answers I heard were that he’s largely an unknown quantity to the rank-and-file staffers and they are keeping an open mind, despite reservations in some cases. While policies will matter most, I think that if Marty can find ways to help improve work conditions on the FDA’s main campus, it could go a long way.
On the other hand, with rumors of substantial reductions in force at the FDA and other federal agencies circulating, it could be that before too long, the agency’s workforce is reduced anyway. If the administration’s plan for making the FDA’s main campus workable is to simply fire a bunch of people (rather than letting them continue important work in hybrid positions), that would be disappointing and potentially dangerous to the American public, given the agency’s crucial role in assessing the safety and efficacy of new medications and medical devices. Work done at the FDA constitutes one of the cornerstones of our progress against a wide range of diseases and health problems.
HHS employee bonuses are on hold.
I’ve learned from two Inside Medicine readers who are employees within the federal government that HHS has placed a hold on annual employee bonuses in all of its agencies, including the NIH, CDC, FDA, and others. Here’s the wording of the email that went out last week:
HHS has informed all Operating and Staff Divisions that all award activities are paused until further notice. This includes:
Incentive Awards
Performance Awards
Departmental Awards
External Awards
Think about what this means. Withholding merit-based bonuses means discouraging the best federal employees from staying in their jobs. Many of the most effective federal employees within HHS could be making more money if they worked in the private sector. These are the exact people we want to keep working for the American people. While I understand the Trump administration thinks it’s a great idea to reduce the size of the federal workforce, I’m sure we can at a minimum agree that we’d like to keep the best employees around! Saving a few bucks on bonuses for the most productive and highly rated HHS employees doesn’t exactly strike me as a cost-effective way to “drain the swamp.”
Five more important stories in the Trump administration’s attack on our health agencies and global leadership…
Here are five other stories I’m following in the ongoing battle for the future of our public health system, along with some brief analyses and links.
HHS suddenly cuts $12 billion in Covid-19 funding and more. Local and state health departments are reeling from news that $11-12 billion of Covid-19-related funding was abruptly canceled on Tuesday, according to NBC News. A high-ranking official at one of the affected jurisdictions confirmed the news to me, describing the devastating effects this move will have on both Covid-19 and other projects. An influx of Covid-19 funding has helped support otherwise unfunded or underfunded important adjacent projects—including data modernization and other tools that will help not just in tracking any future Covid-19 outbreaks that might occur, but many other threats. My friend, the former chief medical officer for Alaska, Dr. Anne Zink, was quoted in The New York Times story covering this development, pointing out that the promised money was being used to fund efforts that were on their way to completion, meaning that the sudden yanking of funding without warning represents the epitome of government inefficiency: all investment, no return. (Thanks, DOGE.) “We are partway through a lab integration [linking data between labs and hospitals]…” she told me last night, “but now without additional money, we won’t finish it.”
NIH grant cancellations. The number of NIH grants being canceled is very alarming. These moves threaten to halt our progress against a swath of medical problems, to say nothing of the careers that are being ruined. A number of living documents have popped up attempting to track them. Some of these are not fully vetted and verified, but at least one was posted by HHS itself. The HHS document in particular has timestamps for each grant termination. So, we can see terminations of research related to LGBTQ+ populations were carried out in droves in February, while more recently, grants related to Covid-19 were axed. Including this one out of Yale that jumped out. “Enhancing K-12 school safety during a respiratory viral pandemic.” I mean, what’s the point in studying that if the government is committed to simply ignoring a pandemic in schools no matter what. It bears mentioning that while Covid-19 affected children the least of any population (but not none), there are other respiratory pathogens that could harm children immensely. Failure to prepare for these eventualities is a sure-fire way to disrupt school more, in such circumstancse, not less.
Pandemic planning is no longer a White House priority. Speaking of a lack of interest in preparing for the next pandemic, the White House quietly reduced the staff of its Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy to one person last week, according to CNN. That’s down from around 20 at the peak of the Biden administration. The one remaining staffer is Dr. Gerald Parker, who is widely respected among pandemic experts. Unfortunately, Parker no longer has a team to lead.
Disgraced anti-vaxxer put in charge of HHS vaccine study. HHS announced that a discredited anti-vaxxer will lead its “investigation” on vaccines and autism. The rumored link has been discredited for decades now, making the decision to spend taxpayer dollars on the topic a wasteful exercise with only two possible outcomes: confirming what we already knew or, more likely, a cynical attempt to undermine one of the best tools we have for keeping children alive and well. The news was met with a melange of outrage and disgust by experts online.
Trump wants to end most vaccine funding to low income nations. The New York Times reported that the Trump administration sent Congress a spreadsheet outlining its wish to stop funding GAVI (for its original name, the “Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization”), among other projects associated with USAID. As with the effective destruction of USAID without the actual legal means to do so, I found the following excerpt from the Times story to be important, despite being buried halfway into the article:
“The memo to Congress presents the plan for foreign assistance as a unilateral decision. However because spending on individual health programs such as H.I.V. or vaccination is congressionally allocated, it is not clear that the administration has legal power to end those programs. This issue is currently being litigated in multiple court challenges.”
Indeed, it seems like the administration’s hope to withdraw funding that has saved millions of lives overseas (and would save many more if the programs continued) may actually depend on Congress and its willingness to going along with such cruelty.
That’s all for now! If you have information about any of the unfolding stories we are following, please email me or find me on Signal at InsideMedicine.88.
Thanks for reading, sharing, speaking out, and supporting Inside Medicine! Please ask your questions in the comments.
The hold on incentive awards has been lifted and is proceeding as planned. And pulling the $12B in funding from State and Local Public Health Departments is a real punch to the gut, maybe the Governors of these States will band together and seek legal action against the Administration to get the funds back.
The claw back of 12B is a gut punch, and the language about the pandemic is so unprofessional. The former CDC communications director published an a piece in the WaPo yesterday "When the CDC and HHS become misinformation superspreaders"--so disheartening. He urged public health to turn to other sources for fact based information.