WASHINGTON — The demand arrived at 4:28 p.m. Eastern time on Valentine’s Day.

“The US government only recognizes two sexes: Male and Female. This needs to be changed immediately,” the popular right-wing account Libs of TikTok posted on X, the social platform owned by Elon Musk.

The missive, blasted to the account’s 4.2 million followers, was accompanied by screenshots of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, the government form that determines eligibility for financial assistance in paying for college or trade school. It allowed students to identify as “nonbinary” or select “prefer not to answer” when asked to select their gender.

DOGE Account Responds to X Users

The account for Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency replied five hours later with screenshots of the updated form: “Fixed.”

As his operation targets spending considered unaligned with President Donald Trump’s agenda, Musk has personally appealed to users of his social media platform to help root out what he has termed “waste, fraud and abuse.” He has been responsive to complaints that go viral, with his team trumpeting the apparent changes pushed through as a result. And for at least two prominent conservative activists, a Trump administration so carefully attuned to right-wing social media has created the opportunity to build an extraordinary pipeline of influence and access.

In multiple instances, viral posts by Chaya Raichik, who is the creator of the Libs of TikTok account and regularly attacks transgender people online, and Christopher Rufo, a writer who has worked to push conservatives further right on education issues, have prompted quick adjustments to public-facing government documents and even policy. Most of their efforts have centered on the Education Department, which Trump has said he wants to eliminate, though other agencies have become targets, too.

FAFSA Planned to Make Gender Compliance Changes

In the case of the FAFSA form, the Education Department had already planned to make those changes to comply with Trump’s executive order requiring that the government only recognize two genders, according to two people involved with the change. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the internal process.

The updates had been approved and were scheduled, according to the two people. But the Libs of TikTok post set off an evening scramble inside the department to make the change immediately so it could be advertised to the public, with multiple contractors being called back from vacation to hastily push through the change, the people said. Raichik declined to comment for this article.

The process, as laid out by Rufo, is straightforward.

“We expose corruption on X. DOGE eliminates it in DC. Rinse and repeat,” Rufo posted on Feb. 19.

Days earlier, he had posted a video highlighting some educational training material he found objectionable. He said it was produced by the Education Department’s little-known Comprehensive Centers program, which helps states address systemic problems in schools.

The video, which Rufo called “taxpayer-funded witchcraft,” consisted of a compilation of clips featuring an instructor speaking about how to discuss Native American history with sensitivity.

“Hey @DOGE_ED, let’s terminate the contracts for the ‘comprehensive centers,’” Rufo posted, tagging a DOGE subaccount created to share actions related to Musk’s efforts at the Education Department. “What do you think?”

Department Announces Grants Terminated

The next day, the department announced that it would, in fact, terminate grants totaling $226 million to the network of 18 regional and national Comprehensive Centers. The official announcement cited Rufo’s posts.

In emailed answers to questions about his relationship with the Musk operation, Rufo said he had a “good relationship with the professionals in the Department of Education,” and was offering recommendations to officials in a “scholarly and nonpartisan manner.”

“When people truly see what their government is doing with their money, they see that it is not about ‘cutting education,’ but cutting left-wing ideological activism which masks itself with the word ‘education,’” he said.

The Comprehensive Centers serve a variety of functions, but were established by statute in 2002 to help states and school districts triage thorny issues facing school districts — such as problems retaining teachers or improving math scores — that they would otherwise be forced to pay to work out themselves.

Several people and groups associated with the Comprehensive Centers, including the American Institutes for Research, a social sciences research organization, said that defunding them meant that schools wouldn’t receive badly needed assistance.

The research organization was selected through a competitive process to operate four of the centers for the next five years, having worked with states on problems like addressing teacher shortages, and applying research to inform literacy interventions in elementary schools.

“The work of the Comprehensive Centers has always been driven by the priorities and needs of the states and districts,” Dana Tofig, a spokesperson for the American Institutes for Research, said in a statement. “Eliminating the centers will make it harder for state and local educators and policymakers to find evidence-based solutions to the challenges they face and improve outcomes for all students.”

The Comprehensive Centers weren’t the first program Rufo targeted on social media. On Feb. 13, Rufo criticized Equity Assistance Centers, a similar support program originally created under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to help desegregate schools.

Hours later, the Education Department announced it would wipe out $350 million in contracts, including $33 million in funding for those centers.

Over the last month, the Education Department has announced a host of budget cuts, eliminating contracts that help fund research into difficult questions about what teaching methods are most effective in early childhood education and beyond.

In lawsuits challenging the authority and legality of Musk’s team, lawyers for the government have often described the Musk operation as advisory, helping guide the heads of federal agencies with recommendations about programs they can theoretically, through their own authority, cancel. The process through which the Education Department decided to cut its contracts was not immediately clear, nor was the amount of input from Musk’s team.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Zach Montague/Eric Lee
c. 2025 The New York Times Company