Last week, HHS Secretary RFK Jr. announced plans to dismantle critical health care services for the American people by gutting his own department. The latest plan includes firing 10,000 employees who have been responding to infectious disease outbreaks, approving new life-saving drugs, administering critical programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and more. This comes after thousands of employees have already left HHS due to DOGE efforts to slash the federal workforce to the bone and cut the programs the American people rely on. These drastic cuts will undermine disease prevention, food inspection, and drug safety, raising the danger Americans face.
HEADLINES
CNN: ‘It’s a Bloodbath’: Massive Wave of Job Cuts Underway at US Health Agencies.
- “Cuts at the CDC slashed divisions that work on workplace health and safety, HIV, injury prevention, reproductive health, smoking and violence prevention, among others.”
Forbes: How The Layoff Of 10,000 Health Workers From HHS Could Affect Your Health.
- “Employees at the CDC are tasked with responding to infectious disease threats like measles, implementing prevention programs for potential outbreaks like bird flu and communicating effective messages to the public so Americans can stay safe. With thousands fewer employees staffing the center, the ability to monitor and contain diseases effectively could be hindered… The Food and Drug Administration, which sets safety standards for medical devices, drugs and food, will see a reduction of 3,500 workers. This degree of downsizing may slow the approval process for many lifesaving drugs and delay inspection of food processing facilities… Institutions of higher learning are already potentially facing enormous funding cuts with a cap of indirect costs to federal research grants to 15%, which translates to hundreds of millions of dollars that will not be granted to many universities.”
STAT: At CDC, Trump Administration’s Job Cuts Wipe Out Wide Array of Specialists.
- “In all, the CDC is expected to lose roughly 2,400 employees, or about 18% of its staff, as part of the broader cuts playing out across the Department of Health and Human Services… The Trump administration has argued the CDC’s mission had become too broad, and that it should focus squarely on infectious disease concerns… ‘We are weaker,’ said one CDC employee who did not receive a termination notice but asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals. The individual noted that the CDC is the country’s rapid response force, deployed when there are new disease threats or bioterror attacks. ‘If there was an outbreak, I would not know who is deployment-ready to get on a plane in the next 24 hours,’ this person wrote. ‘I would not know who is still left to GET people deployment-ready if they are not already up-to-date.’”
The Washington Post: Widespread Layoffs, Purge of Leadership Underway at U.S. Health Agencies.
- “Senior leaders across the Department of Health and Human Services were put on leave and countless other employees lost their jobs Tuesday as the Trump administration began a sweeping purge of the agencies that oversee government health programs… At the CDC, entire branches and divisions were eliminated or significantly reduced, employees said. In the Immunization Services Division, staff members who worked on vaccination education and outreach to under-vaccinated communities were among those who received notices, including one person working on the ongoing measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico, according to two staff members who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.”
Bloomberg: Top US Drug, Tobacco Regulators Cut as RFK Jr. Reshapes Health Agency.
- “The sweeping cuts also allow Kennedy to reshape the country’s health policy and communications, providing a road map for where the new health chief is directing his focus. Among the 10,000 people cut on Tuesday, some entire divisions were gutted including groups working on sexually transmitted diseases, environmental health, global health and birth defects, according to people familiar with the matter. Big swaths of the agency’s communications and federal records teams were also laid off.”
Newsweek: Here’s How RFK Jr.’s HHS Cuts Could Impact Americans.
- “HHS administers health insurance programs that affect nearly half the U.S. population, including Medicare and Medicaid, and regulates medical products and food. Critics warn that the scale of the cuts could jeopardize disease response capacity, scientific research, and regulatory oversight. ‘They may as well be renaming it the Department of Disease because their plan is putting lives in serious jeopardy,’ Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, said on Friday.”
NBC News: Widespread Job Cuts Begin at Health Agencies.
- “The administration made deep and wide-ranging cuts to divisions responsible for tackling HIV, improving minority health and preventing injury, such as gun violence. Jobs were eliminated at offices overseeing the approval of new drugs, providing health insurance and responding to infectious disease outbreaks. A number of lesser-known divisions — including several focused on the safety of mining workers — were cut entirely.”
Politico: Thousands Laid off as Kennedy and Musk Take Aim at Health Agencies.
- “Driving the cuts is Kennedy’s desire to reorient HHS to combat chronic diseases, rather than infectious ones, and root out conflicts of interest he claims have led it to approve dangerous drugs. A longtime critic of vaccination, Kennedy has accused HHS of downplaying vaccine side effects — in defiance of public health consensus that vaccines are safe.”
EXPERTS
Dr. Robert Califf, Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner: “The FDA as we’ve known it is finished, with most of the leaders with institutional knowledge and a deep understanding of product development and safety no longer employed. I believe that history will see this a huge mistake.” [LinkedIn, 04/01/25]
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, Former Trump Food and Drug Administration Commissioner: “Through a generation of congressional actions, investments in expertise and hiring, and careful policymaking, we built the FDA into the most efficient, forward-leaning drug regulatory agency in the world—and established the U.S. as the global center of biopharmaceutical innovation. Today, the cumulative barrage on that drug-discovery enterprise, threatens to swiftly bring back those frustrating delays for American consumers, particularly affecting rare diseases and areas of significant unmet medical need.” [X, 04/01/25]
Dr. Mandy Cohen, Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director: “These cuts to agency experts and programs leave our country less safe, less prepared and without the necessary talent and resources to respond to health threats.” [NBC, 04/01/25]
Dr. Ashish Jha, Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, Former Biden Administration COVID-19 Coordinator: “We’ve never seen anything like this before. We rely on our CDC for things like tracking down disease outbreaks. We rely on NIH for research into new treatments and tests and vaccines. At this moment, whether those will continue to be effective has really been put into question. We don’t know what the implications of all of this will be. I’m worried that what we’re going to see is more people getting sick, more disease outbreaks and infrastructure that is going to be less and less capable of responding to those threats.” [NPR, 04/01/25]
Jeremy Berg, Former Director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the NIH: “The level of cuts at NIH I am hearing about today is truly mind-boggling. I try not to be hyperbolic but this seems to be a massacre. … I honestly don’t know where this leads.” [NPR, 04/01/25]
Dr. Tom Frieden, Former Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: “If we look at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are discussions of reducing our global work that’s really dangerous. It means that instead of finding and stopping threats where they emerge, which is less expensive, safer and more efficient, we’ll have to fight them here within the United States at greater risk and greater expense. … These are changes which not only will make the U.S. less safe, less healthy, and with higher healthcare costs, but unless these changes are reversed, they will literally cause millions of deaths around the world.” [PBS, 03/29/25]
Larry Levitt, KFF Executive Vice President for Health Policy: “The general public likely won’t feel the results of these HHS layoffs immediately. But eventually, these layoffs will affect the health information available to people, access to care and prevention, and oversight of health and social services.” [X, 04/01/25]
Dr. Craig Spencer: “Thousands of the best experts at FDA, NIH, and all across HHS are being terminated right now. These are the people who make sure the medications you and your children take are safe. These are the people who perform and oversee research on cancer, infant health, and so so so much more. These are the people who make sure new devices that physicians and patients use are effective. These are the people who keep workers safe on the job and help prevent devastating injuries for workers all around the country. These are the people who track what drugs and medications are experiencing shortages so we can adapt. These are the people who help tackle HIV and other infectious diseases, asthma, lead poisoning, and everything else that makes many Americans sick. And now, thousands of them are gone. There is no way this makes Americans healthier. We will regret this.” [X, 04/01/25]
Dr. Richard Besser, President and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: “HHS has a mission to improve and protect Americans’ health and wellbeing. Its leadership should be working nonstop to ensure health is no longer a privilege but a right. Instead, they are systematically and cruelly dismantling our nation’s public health system and workforce, which threatens the health and wellbeing of everyone in America. … These are reckless, thoughtless cuts that will only make American communities less healthy and less safe. They represent an abdication of the department’s essential responsibility to promote and protect health.” [Press Release, 04/01/25]
Barbara Collura, President of RESOLVE: “It is vital that the CDC, our nation’s public health agency, employs doctors and scientists who understand infertility, a disease that impacts one in six people worldwide. Following today’s layoffs at the CDC, there will be no experts on infertility who will be able to inform public policy, brief members of Congress, publish articles and reports, and advance public awareness on the causes and treatments for infertility. RESOLVE is deeply concerned by this development and what it means for those who struggle to build their family.” [X, 04/01/25]