Massive cuts stun staff

RFK Jr.’s massive cuts stun staff, leave senior employees scrambling

The cuts sent shockwaves through the department’s sprawling workforce, prompting a scramble among senior agency officials to figure out which employees and policy priorities were affected.

By Adam Cancryn, Chelsea Cirruzzo, Ruth Reader, David Lim, Sophie Gardner and Robert King

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s move to gut and reorganize the federal health department shocked many people tasked with making it happen, and left others fearful that everything from the safety of the nation’s drug supply to disease response could be at risk.

The disaster preparedness agency in the Department of Health and Human Services has just two days to prepare a plan to fold itself into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to an HHS official, granted anonymity for fear of retribution.

Health staffers entrusted with regulating prescription drugs, managing public health programs and conducting scientific research were blindsided by the cuts, with many learning the details from a Wall Street Journal story published early on Thursday, several people familiar with the matter said.

“There’s very few people who actually know what’s happening,” said one health official granted anonymity to describe the internal reaction.

House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) also said he learned of the cuts from news reports. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), chair of the committee that oversees the health department, found out from Kennedy during a breakfast Thursday just before the news broke.

The hushed-and-hurried nature of Thursday’s announcement, which called for terminating 10,000 workers, the elimination of departments and the closure of regional offices, underscores how Kennedy as health secretary intends to impose his singular vision on a department he has chided as a bloated bureaucracy that has lost its way.

“We’re going to eliminate an entire alphabet soup of departments and agencies while preserving their core functions,” Kennedy said in a six-minute video explaining the cuts that he posted to X on Thursday.

The latest cuts, which come after roughly 10,000 employees had left over the last several months, sent shockwaves through the department’s sprawling workforce, prompting a scramble among senior agency officials to figure out which employees and policy priorities would be affected. About one-quarter of the department’s 82,000 employees have left or are expected to be terminated.

Some in the health department believed that the cuts, which include folding the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response into the CDC, and eliminating support staff, will end up costing the government money in the long run.

“There’s this narrative being spun that somehow by eliminating jobs and functions that taxpayer dollars are going to be saved or that programs will be more efficient,” said a staffer with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services granted anonymity for fear of retribution. “The reality is the exact opposite.”

Even as Trump administration officials insist that no essential services would be affected, the breadth and depth of the cuts sent chills across the health sector with many in and out of government certain that critical functions would suffer.

“I wouldn’t trust not one FDA-approved drug after they are done with us,” said an employee with the Food and Drug Administration granted anonymity for fear of retribution.

The cuts are expected to take effect at the end of May, according to a letter Thomas Nagy, the assistant secretary for human resources, sent to the union representing HHS employees. The reductions are aimed at administrative jobs such as human resources, information technology, procurement and finance positions, as well as areas determined to be “redundant or duplicative with other functions in HHS or across the federal government,” according to the letter obtained by POLITICO.

But some jobs that seem duplicative may not be so easy to fold into other agencies, according to the CMS staffer. The employee said the administration wants to centralize all IT contracts into the General Services Administration, but lots of agencies have small contracts that are specific to their offices and wouldn’t make sense to centralize, the staffer said.

One former Trump HHS official said some aspects of the reorganization make sense, like scrapping regional offices. But other moves seem like they were decided by consultants who took a “look at things on paper with no history or background,” the former official said.

“Let’s face it, these guys just have no idea what they’re doing,” said a pharmaceutical lobbyist granted anonymity to discuss the impacts of the FDA firings. “They are comfortable with the ‘fire everyone and try to re-hire them if needed approach. They already had to once with devices.”

Sara Brenner, the acting FDA commissioner, praised the reorganization in an internal email sent to all staff. An HHS fact sheet said the cuts aren’t supposed to impact FDA drug, medical device, food reviewers or inspectors.

“I firmly believe the changes for FDA, as outlined by Secretary Kennedy, will position the agency for the future and empower us to maximally deliver on our regulatory mission,” she wrote in the email viewed by POLITICO.

While many Republicans on the Hill applauded the move, some appeared taken aback by the size of the cuts.

“The president said we need to use a scalpel not a hatchet,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.). “I assume that whoever suggested these cuts are heeding his advice.”

Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), the top Senate appropriator for FDA funding, said he hasn’t seen the details of the firings.

“I get that we want to find savings and I support trying to cut waste, fraud and abuse, but we still have to look at it carefully and make sure that we have what we need to get the job done,” Hoeven said.

Democrats were quick to condemn the move, saying the cuts, coming amid bird flu and measles outbreaks, will have “devastating consequences.”

“These massive layoffs will have a devastating impact on our nation’s health care system and the health of the American people,” said House Energy and Commerce ranking member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and health subcommittee ranking member Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), who called for an immediate hearing on the HHS cuts.

Dawn O’Connell, who ran HHS’ preparedness and response agency during the Biden era, blasted Kennedy’s plan to merge it with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warning it would hurt the administration’s ability to defend against and respond to a range of crises.

“If the secretary is interested in keeping America healthy, he’s got to have an organization that’s looking around corners for whatever’s coming next,” O’Connell said in an interview. “I can tell you from my four years, everything is coming next.”

She added that the agency had one of the smaller budgets at HHS, meaning the financial impact of eliminating it as a standalone office would be minimal. And though it has largely become associated with playing a central role in organizing the response to public health crises like Covid, O’Connell argued that eliminating it would also mean leaving the U.S. more vulnerable to other threats that it routinely responded to, like cyberattacks and natural disasters.

“If the goal of this is efficiency, it’s hard to see where you get more efficient than a standalone ASPR,” she said. “To treat them in this way doesn’t seem particularly wise.”

The reorganization is the culmination of weeks of secretive work carried out by Trump health officials and members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, with the goal of drastically shrinking HHS and imposing greater political control over its priorities.

Trump aides have long regarded the health bureaucracy as too unwieldy, independent and difficult to control, said two people familiar with the process — with some harboring resentments stemming from their long-held belief that career public health staffers undermined Trump’s response to the Covid pandemic and cost him reelection.

Kennedy and his team also came to view broad swaths of the HHS workforce as redundant, arguing that the department’s public health agencies had become too focused on infectious disease work — rather than combating chronic disease — and consolidated too much power within centers run by career officials.

A longtime anti-vaccine activist, Kennedy spent years criticizing the health department and sowing doubts about its work on vaccines and other drugs. In the weeks before Trump nominated him to run HHS, Kennedy vowed to purge the FDA, writing on X that staffers at the agency should “pack your bags.” He had alsothreatened to fire 600 employees at the National Institutes of Health employees on his first day. The planned cuts to the agency unveiled Thursday would amount to roughly twice that number.

Trump officials have sought to shrink the influence of career leaders, primarily through mass firings of probationary employees that in many cases included officials recently promoted to senior levels. A judge paused those firings, though their fate remains in legal limbo as the administration appeals the decision. Trump health officials have also targeted individual employees, including ousting a handful of top officials at the NIH.

“They’ve got their reorganization, but we’ll have more conversations, let me just put it that way,” Cassidy said.