Over the last few weeks, the Trump administration has slashed vital health programs that the American people rely on. The latest announcement included 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 at a time when America is facing its largest measles outbreak in decades, in addition to other public health threats. Experts have made it clear these cuts will have devastating impacts across the country. In response, Protect Our Care President Brad Woodhouse issued the following statement:
“Donald Trump is doing everything he can to sabotage American health care and rip away lifesaving benefits from millions of Americans. From halting life-saving research to limiting the ability of critical departments to do their jobs, the effects of these draconian cuts are already being felt across the country. As a result, more Americans will get sick and more will die.”
COMMENTARY
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, 4/1/25]
Robert Califf: “If we let down our guard and don’t do a good job reviewing, we’re going to unleash some things that are really dangerous into the population. Unless there’s some super plan, there’s going to be an effect on safety, because it takes whole teams of people to monitor safety of products, and the timetables for product review will probably be delayed.” [CNN, 4/1/25]
Peggy Hamburg, Former FDA Commissioner: “Obviously this is horrifying, thoughtless and very short-sighted. … These cuts/RIFS will be devastating to an agency that is regarded as the gold standard around the world.” [STAT, 4/1/25]
Former CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen: “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.” [CNN, 4/1/25]
Don Berwick, Former Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services: “While funding levels have ebbed and flowed in the past, the Trump administration cuts [are] entirely unprecedented and vicious beyond any precedent. … We’re injuring the future severely. … This is taking down the research structure of America.” [The Boston Globe, 4/1/25]
Tom Frieden, Former Director of the CDC and President and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives: “The CDC cuts announced Tuesday threaten America’s health, safety, and economy. Despite claims of efficiency, these cuts target proven programs that prevent disease and save lives — and as a result, Americans will be sicker and face increased health care costs. The government’s goal should not be to hit an arbitrary number of jobs eliminated, but to focus on the number of illnesses and premature deaths prevented.” [STAT, 4/1/25]
Mitch Zeller, Former FDA Tobacco Chief: “If you make it virtually impossible to create and draft policy, then you are eviscerating the role of the center. … From a public health perspective it makes absolutely no sense.” [Associated Press, 4/1/25]
Former Administration for Community Living Employee Matt Cutler: “I think people need to ask themselves, did the money that’s going to their communities arrive sooner and more accurately as a result of this? And if not, they need to start asking questions and holding people accountable.” [Roll Call, 4/1/25]
Alison Barkoff, Former Director for Administration on Community Living and Director of Health Law Program at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health: “The programs that ACL implements improve the lives of literally tens of millions of older adults, people with disabilities and their families and caregivers. … There’s no way to have these RIFs and not impact the programs and the people who rely on them.“ [NPR, 4/1/25]
Sam Bagenstos, Former General Counsel of HHS and Professor of Law at the University of Michigan: “It’s really hard to comprehend the effect on so many people who have worked so hard to ensure public health and have suffered for it. … It’s just going to be absolutely terrible for public health.” [STAT, 4/1/25]
Emily Erbelding, Director of the Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases: “Everybody has been waiting for the other shoe to drop, so I just thought, ‘well, this is the shoe.’ […] It’s going to hurt science for a whole generation.” [STAT, 4/1/25]
Andrew Germain, Director of Fiscal Operations and Accountability for the Administration for Children and Families: “For the communities that need the funding and need the support of the federal office, they’re going to be without those resources. … You’re talking about individuals who rely on crisis assistance from the LIHEAP program to keep the power on, whether it be for a medical reason or some other potentially life-threatening purpose.” [NBC News, 4/1/25]
Walter Koroshetz, National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System Director: “To get rid of 11 of our senior PIs … we’re hoping that’s a mistake, because we can’t figure out why they would want to do that. … The labs affected by the layoffs include those involved in clinical trials as well as preclinical studies. It is unclear, NIH staff said, what the plans are for the data they’ve accumulated or what will happen to patients involved in ongoing trials.” [WIRED, 4/1/25]
Dr. Michelle Tarver, Director of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health: “Your work has been critical to advancing medical device innovation, ensuring patient safety, and upholding the public trust in what we do. … You will be deeply missed in the impact of your absence will be felt far and wide.” [STAT, 4/1/25]
Alex Saint, Health Communications Specialist at the FDA: “People need to know the action that they need to take to keep themselves safe and healthy, and if you don’t have any way to communicate that to the public, people are on their own,” [STAT, 4/1/25]
Indian Health Service Employee: “I find it insulting. … The way it’s presented as an option to folks makes an IHS job seem even more undesirable.” [STAT, 4/1/25]
FDA Official: “The food compliance officers and animal drug reviewers survived, but they have no one at the comms office to put out a safety alert, no admin staff to pay external labs to test products.” [CBS News, 4/1/25]
Former CDC Employee: “It’s so chaotic. The amount of knowledge that is being purged today at CDC is just tragic. … They are firing whole organizational units. These are people that have 30 years of service, people with children, veterans, there was no thought put into trying to retain people that have institutional knowledge. […] Most of the money at CDC does not fund staff, it funds money going out to states, cities, tribes, public health departments, community organizations. So when you’re shutting down the lead program, you’re shutting down funding that supports tracking whether lead is in the water or not. Programs that have been around for decades [are] just gone.” [Rolling Stone, 4/2/25]
Former Reproductive Health Division Staffer: “You don’t expect your whole program to be wiped out. … Without CDC’s contraception guidelines, more women will die as pregnancy is the most dangerous thing a 20 or 30 year old will do in the U.S.” [Rolling Stone, 4/2/25]
Former CDC Staffer: “Shitshow is an understatement for what just happened at the CDC. … What’s especially concerning is that the entire CDC FOIA office has been fired. Without a FOIA team now the American people have significantly less transparency into what the CDC is doing and puts the agency at significant legal risk for not complying with FOIA requests for information.” [Rolling Stone, 4/2/25]
Michael T. Osterholm, Director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy: “Today was simply a tragedy. … There is so much intellectual capital that literally got swept under the rug today in this country, and we are going to pay a price for this for years to come.” [The New York Times, 4/1/25]
Wendy Armstrong, Director of Infectious Diseases at the University of Colorado: “We’ve had a lot of devastating days, but this really is unfathomable. … It’s astounding, it will affect patients with all kinds of different kinds of infections, and Americans will suffer, and people will die, and that’s a horrible thing to see coming.” [The Bulwark, 4/1/25]
Jade Pagkas-Bather, Infectious Disease Doctor at the University of Chicago: “We’re going to have patients die…Unnecessary, preventable death. […] This is not just something that impacts people in the ivory tower. This is not just something that impacts people who are physicians, or scientists, or academics. This is coming for you.” [WIRED, 4/1/25]
Joseph Cherabie, Physician & Assistant Professor at Washington University in St. Louis: “It will be catastrophic. We’re still seeing young people coming in with new HIV diagnoses, sometimes advanced HIV. Our efforts are largely dependent on these federal grants. … We use them to make sure that we are able to distribute HIV testing equipment. We use them to make sure that we can get information and data on how much PrEP is being distributed, how many HIV diagnoses we have, how many HIV tests we’re giving out. If we lose that, then we’re moving around in the dark.” [WIRED, 4/1/25]
Katy Kozhimannil, Health Policy Researcher at the University of Minnesota: “I am truly concerned about the potential impacts. With the loss of staff that support PRAMS, we risk a longer delay or loss of this important data resource for studying maternal health.” [STAT, 4/1/25]
Marian Jarlenski, Professor of Health Policy at the University of Pittsburgh: “I don’t know how else to say it, this data system is needed. It’s not an option. It’s part of having a functional public health system.” [STAT, 4/1/25]
Ezekiel Emanuel, Oncologist and Bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania: “It has fueled many of the breakthroughs from discovering the DNA code for each amino acid to the hepatitis C virus. … Dismantling it will not make America great but undercut our position as the world’s leader in science. Americans will suffer. … Diseases will not be cured and treatments will not be found.” [The Bulwark, 4/1/25]
Dr. Duane Wesemann, Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School and Associate Physician at Brigham and Women’s: “We’ve been hit by a wave. … The impact is devastating.” [The Boston Globe, 4/1/25]
Dr. Bruce Fischl, Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School: “We are all terrified. … Every morning when I wake up, I check to see whether our grants have been affected.” [The Boston Globe, 4/1/25]
Ariel Beccia, Instructor at the LGBTQ Health Center of Excellence at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health: “I was shocked and devastated,” said Ariel Beccia. “If this continues, we are going to lose a generation of scientists.” [The Boston Globe, 4/1/25]
Sharon Gilmartin, Executive Director of Safe States Alliance: “Our Indian Health Service is a really important part of our public health infrastructure, but it shouldn’t be used as a pawn when actually you should place people into the Indian Health Service that actually are meant to work with tribal nations and are confident to do so.” [STAT, 4/1/25]
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America Spokesperson Alex Schriver: “We recognize the need to find efficiencies, but it’s critical the FDA has the expertise and capacity it needs to maintain its gold standard regulatory review. … The rapid and substantial changes at FDA this week raise questions about the agency’s ability to fulfill its mission to bring new innovative medicines to patients.” [Politico, 4/1/25]