U.S. DOGE Service employees have inserted themselves into the government’s long-established process to alert the public about potential federal grants and allow organizations to apply for funds, according to four people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive situation.
DOGE employees have made changes to grants.gov, a federal website that has traditionally served as a clearinghouse for more than $500 billion in annual awards and is used by thousands of outside organizations, the people said. Federal agencies including the Defense, State and Interior departments have historically have posted their grant opportunities directly to the site. Nonprofits, universities and local governments respond to these grant opportunities with applications to receive federal funding for activities that include cancer research, cybersecurity, highway construction and wastewater management.’
But a DOGE engineer recently deleted many federal officials’ permissions to post grant opportunities, without informing them that their permissions had been removed, the people said.
Lambert here: Does this DOGE “engineer” have a name? Below: Luke Farritor.
Now the responsibility of posting these grant opportunities is poised to rest with DOGE — and if its employees delay those postings or stop them altogether, “it could effectively shut down federal-grant making,” said one federal official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal operations.
Agency officials have been told that the grants.gov site has been under systems maintenance. They have been instructed to email their planned grant notices to grantreview [at] hhs.gov (grantreview[at]hhs[dot]gov), an inbox at the Department of Health and Human Services that is being monitored by DOGE, the people said.
Current and former federal officials characterized DOGE’s new authorities over grant opportunities as part of its effort to take control of federal IT systems.
“If DOGE is going to sign off on [Notice of Funding Opportunities (NOFOs)], it’s a big expansion of their responsibilities,” said Robert Gordon, who served as the HHS assistant secretary of financial resources during the Biden administration. “NOFOs set criteria for making grants, the rules of the game … and if DOGE chooses not to sign off on NOFOs, money can’t get spent, and it is effectively impounded.”
The Trump administration has publicly confirmed that DOGE was given some authority over the grants website. Luke Farritor, a DOGE engineer, was granted access to grants.gov on March 21 and had been made an administrator of the system, according to a Trump administration court filing on March 29 related to a lawsuit challenging DOGE’s authority to access federal data.
A DOGE engineer last week wrote a script to disable federal users from posting to grants.gov, without providing any advance notice to the users, said two of the people with knowledge of the team’s activities. DOGE also set up the new grantreview [at] hhs.gov (grantreview[at]hhs[dot]gov) inbox and separately deleted the permissions of many users this week, the people said.
In late March, staff who help write and post NOFOs across the NIH attended a meeting at which leaders said the agency would soon resume publishing funding opportunities — but that DOGE would now be involved in the process. “Modifications to the workflow,” read contemporaneous meeting notes obtained by The Post: “anticipating DOGE will have final say on what NOFOs can go out (discussions ongoing with HHS).”
Staff who work on grants attended a meeting this week at which leaders gave yet another update on how DOGE will be reviewing NOFOs. For NOFOs with “concept clearance,” approval for the final posting must be obtained from the office, center or institute director and the NIH director, as well as DOGE reviewers, according to contemporaneous meeting records obtained by The Post.
NOFOs that do not have such clearance will have to go before the NIH director and DOGE representatives twice — once to approve the forecast report, and once to approve the final NOFO, per the meeting records. And any NOFO dealing with a “controversial topic” will require additional approval from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, according to the records.
“I don’t know how to best describe how angry I am about this,” said one NIH employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
Lambert here: Ah, well, nevertheless….
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