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 for Inside Climate News

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

There was no job announcement, no search committee to identify top candidates, no interviews or reference checks.

The position to lead the nation’s premier environmental health research institute wasn’t even open.

Yet Jay Bhattacharya, a political appointee who oversees the 27 institutes and centers under NIH, named Kyle Walsh, an associate professor in neurosurge

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