Another avoidable staffing disaster has erupted inside President Donald Trump’s administration, as I’ve reported. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Trump’s new Director of the National Institutes of Health, has quietly appointed Democrat and Obama-era official Dr. Rick Woychik as Senior Advisor for the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) strategy. According to NIH’s own announcement, Woychik will now help shape and direct the entire MAHA implementation.
This appointment raises serious questions about the vetting process inside Trump’s NIH. Federal records confirm Woychik is a registered Democrat who entered NIH during the Barack Obama administration in 2011. He later became Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Toxicology Program, where he remained through 2025, firmly embedded in the Biden–Harris scientific bureaucracy.
During his tenure at NIEHS, archived NIH webpages I’ve uncovered show that Woychik played a central role in expanding “anti-racism,” DEI, and “environmental justice” initiatives across the agency. These programs were not minor additions; they were structural rewrites aligned with the ideological priorities of the Biden–Harris administration. In 2024, he even coauthored a journal article with staff from twenty-five different Biden-era NIH offices promoting DEI as a required organizing principle for all federally funded scientific research.
Another 2024 article titled, “Racism as a public health issue in environmental health disparities and environmental justice: working toward solutions” was also authored by NIH staff. It singled out Woychik as a DEI leader, stating: “Current NIEHS director, Rick Woychik, Ph.D. has expressed his commitment to prioritize the Institute’s focus on environmental justice.”
In September 2024 — when the NIH leadership class fully expected Kamala Harris to win the presidency — Woychik released the NIEHS 2025–2029 Strategic Plan. The now-archived original version, obtained by Loomer Unleashed, placed DEI at the center of the document. Not as a supporting theme, but as the primary institutional priority. The plan called for recruiting a Scientific Diversity Officer and staffing an entire office devoted to advancing DEIAC initiatives. DEI was also listed as one of Woychik’s personal “Leadership Core Values.”
Only after Trump was elected and began restructuring federal agencies did NIEHS quietly revise the plan in May 2025, removing the DEI language. But the receipts remain. And so does Woychik, now elevated into a senior advisory role by Bhattacharya.
Woychik’s ideological record is not the only problem. The NIH announcement praising his past leadership glosses over the most significant detail of his career: Woychik spent nearly a decade as President and CEO of The Jackson Laboratory, one of the largest suppliers of animals for laboratory experimentation anywhere in the world.
Under Woychik’s leadership, Jackson Lab expanded its footprint, research programs, and animal testing pipeline through multiple major construction projects. The nonprofit White Coat Waste has identified several papers published by Woychik during his NIH tenure, including a study in which he and colleagues addicted laboratory animals to cocaine.
I have already exposed that Acting NIH Deputy Director Nicole Kleinstreuer, another Bhattacharya appointment, is a Biden-era official with ActBlue donations, anti-Trump social media history, and a long record of defending Fauci-era animal testing. She previously worked under Woychik at NIEHS and has now been elevated to a top leadership role despite her openly partisan background. Kleinstreuer has stated publicly that NIH has “no intention” of phasing out animal studies, and under her oversight as Bhattacharya’s self-styled “animal testing czar,” the NIH has continued funding Fauci’s labs and even authorized new testing on dogs, cats, and primates.
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Meanwhile, other Trump agencies, including the Navy and CDC, have already moved to reduce or eliminate wasteful testing after feeling the pressure from Loomer Unleashed and watchdog organizations. But inside NIH, the Biden-era holdovers remain firmly ensconced, and the old networks remain untouched.
With Woychik and Kleinstreuer both occupying powerful roles inside Trump’s NIH, the agency is being shaped by officials who do not share the administration’s goals and, in many cases, openly opposed Trump’s presidency. It explains why DEI frameworks, environmental justice ideology, and entrenched practices like animal experimentation continue to persist inside NIH even as other agencies reform.
Why are Biden-era, openly anti-Trump bureaucrats still being empowered inside President Trump’s government at all?
The failure to remove career Trump-haters from leadership positions inside federal agencies is one of the fastest ways to sabotage Trump’s America First agenda from the inside. These appointments should never have made it past the first screening interview, let alone into senior advisory roles shaping national health strategy.
If the administration is serious about restoring integrity, dismantling the entrenched deep state, and eliminating wasteful and abusive programs, especially inside NIH, the solution is obvious – fire every holdover and start over.
And this time, vet like the future of the country depends on it because it does.
