About 20 people working on medicine devices at Food and Drug Administration dismissed amid government purge

US Food and Drug Administration employees reviewing Elon Musk’s brain implant company Neuralink were fired over the weekend as part of a broader purge of the federal workforce, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter.

The cuts included about 20 people in the FDA’s office of neurological and physical medicine devices, several of whom worked on Neuralink, according to the two sources, who asked not to be identified because of fear of professional repercussions. That division includes reviewers overseeing clinical-trial applications by Neuralink and other companies making so-called brain-computer interface devices, the sources said.

This article was amended on 18 February 2025 to say that Musk contributed more than $280m to Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, not $250bn as previously stated.