Image by Roberto Schmidt / AFP via Getty / FuturismCancerPresident-elect Donald Trump hasn't yet been sworn in, but his advisor and major financial backer Elon Musk has already killed a bipartisan bill that would have provided money for pediatric cancer research.As political journalist Sam Stein reports for The Bulwark, Congressional GOP leadership has kowtowed to Musk's pressure and kiboshed the budget proposal meant to keep the government open and fund essential functions.In a barrage of posts including a4:15 AM tweet on Wednesday morning the X-formerly-Twitter owner insisted that the bill "should not pass." By that night, Republicans had shot down the budget proposal and with it any hope that Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy's Department of Government Efficiency (abbreviated, annoyingly, as DOGE) would be a mere vanity project for the billionaire.Soon after the initial bill failed to pass, Trump endorsed a revised (read: much more limited) version that also failed to pass the House of Representatives, leading to a potential government shutdown.As Stein points out, the spending bill that Musk murdered contained a veritable conservative wishlist, including money to bolster semiconductor supply chains, protections for rural consumers ripped off by the internet service providers, and restrictions on American investment in China.Eliminating those provisions as well as the whole "keeping the government open" thing is a huge deal. But a bit involving pediatric cancer research is aparticularly bad look.In its original form, the budget proposal would have extended funding for the National Institutes of Health's Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Program, which passed during a similarly gridlocked Congressional session in 2014. Named for a 10-year-old girl who died from a brain tumor the year prior, that program funded a decade of research into causes and cures for childhood cancers like the one that killed Miller and now, it's unclear what will happen to it now that it's been eliminated from the budget.In an interview withThe Bulwark, Nancy Goodman, the founder of the Kids vs. Cancer nonprofit and mother to a child who died of cancer at just 10 years old, said the exclusion of the Kids First program is a "completely heart-wrenching outcome.""We spent a lot of time putting together policies with broad bipartisan support to help kids seriously ill," Goodman said. "How can it be that our society is not thinking about the most vulnerable children and doing everything they can to help them? How can we cut this out in the name of efficiency? How does that make sense?"That kind of pained questioning seems, unfortunately, to be par for the course with this incoming administration and Trump hasn't even officially taken office yet.Share This Article