Close Friend of JD Vance Skirts Normal Channels to Take Over NIH Environmental Health Institute

Inside Climate News · By Liza Gross · last updated October 21, 2025 – 4:16 PM

Despite a federal hiring freeze, the Trump administration just appointed a scientist who calls Vance one of his “closest friends” to head the nation’s key environmental health research arm.

By Liza Gross

Employees at the National Institutes of Health learned in an email on Friday, in the midst of a hiring freeze, that their prestigious environmental health sciences research center has a new director.

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