The Department of Government Efficiency has taken control of a federal website that universities and other organizations use to find out about—and apply for—federal grant opportunities, The Washington Post reported Friday.
Federal officials have historically listed on Grants.gov more than $500 billion in annual federal grant opportunities from numerous agencies, including the Defense, State and Interior Departments, that fund research on a range of topics, such as cancer, cybersecurity and wastewater management. However, an engineer from DOGE—the agency run by billionaire Donald Trump donor Elon Musk—deleted, without notice, many of those officials’ permissions to post those funding opportunities.
Agency officials have been instructed instead to send their planned grant notices to a Department of Health and Human Services email address that DOGE is monitoring. The HHS, which has long managed Grants.gov, said it’s “taking action to ensure new grant opportunities are aligned” with the Trump administration’s priorities outlined in its Make America Healthy Again agenda, according to the Post.
Now DOGE is responsible for posting grant opportunities. And if it delays them or stops posting them altogether, that “could effectively shut down federal-grant making,” an anonymous federal official told the Post.