Mass layoffs hit health agencies that track disease and regulate food

The Trump administration laid off thousands of federal health workers Tuesday in a purge that included senior leaders and top scientists charged with regulating food and drugs, protecting Americans from disease and researching new treatments and cures.

Layoff notices began arriving at 5 a.m., workers said, affecting offices responsible for everything from global health to food safety. Senior officials based in the Washington, D.C., area and Atlanta were reassigned to the Indian Health Service and asked to choose among locations including Alaska, Oklahoma and New Mexico — a tactic to force people out, employees said.

The layoffs and reassignments touch every aspect of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, and are part of what the administration has said is a vast restructuring of the agency. Entire units focused on reproductive health and preventing gun injuries were wiped out. So was a vaccine research program aimed at preventing the next pandemic.

Tuesday afternoon, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who chairs the Senate health committee, summoned Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to testify about the agency reorganization at an April 10 hearing.

Outside experts and former officials said the loss of expertise was immeasurable. Many described it as a “bloodletting.” Hundreds of people, many carrying handmade signs, gathered in the lobby of a National Cancer Institute building in the Maryland suburbs Tuesday morning to witness the exodus of fired workers, but were dispersed so they could walk out without fanfare. Some employees, both current and former, were in tears.

But as staff members reeled and comforted one another, Kennedy posted a video on social media that showed him swearing in the new heads of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Marty Makary, and the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.

“Welcome aboard,” Kennedy said. “The revolution begins today.”

The cuts were intended to fulfill Kennedy’s plan, announced last week, to shrink his department from 82,000 to 62,000 employees. Tuesday’s layoffs affected 10,000 employees, on top of 10,000 who had already been fired or left voluntarily. The department did not respond to a request for comment on the record.

The restructuring is intended to bring communications and other functions directly under Kennedy, who has vowed to “make America healthy again.” It includes collapsing a number of agencies into a new division called the Administration for a Healthy America. Kennedy said last week that the department was “going to do more with less.”

The layoffs are affecting agencies including the FDA, the NIH and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Kennedy is also eliminating entire but lesser known parts of his department, such as the Administration for Community Living, which supports programs that help older Americans and people with disabilities live independently. Advocates for disability rights say the cuts could deprive the most vulnerable Americans of housing, personal care and other services.

At the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, cuts hollowed out entire offices including the internal policy lab, the team that administers a national survey of drug use, an office of behavioral health equity, the contracts management division and all 10 regional offices, according to Miriam Delphin-Rittmon, a former assistant health secretary for mental health and substance use. She left the agency Jan. 20 and has been hearing from former colleagues.

The policy lab was established as part of the 21st Century Cures Act, a law passed by Congress in 2016.

“It’s not clear really the strategy,” Delphin-Rittmon said. “Those are important content areas.”

The cuts also fell on senior leaders, including the director of the center for mental health services, Dr. Anita Everett, who was hired into a senior position at the agency during the first Trump administration, and Michelle Greenhalgh, the agency’s director of legislative affairs, according to multiple people with direct knowledge of the filings.

“Today was simply a tragedy,” said Michael T. Osterholm, who directs the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, and has advised presidents of both parties. “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.”

Bhattacharya, on his first day of work, sent an email to staff saying the layoffs would “have a profound impact on key NIH administrative functions, including communications, legislative affairs, procurement and human resources.” He expressed his appreciation for the “scientists and staff whose work has contributed to lifesaving breakthroughs in biology and medicine.”

A number of top health officials received notice that they were being reassigned to regional offices of the Indian Health Service, which is responsible for providing federal health services to Native Americans and Alaska Natives.

The health service is chronically understaffed and underfunded; the reassignment notices said it has an “untenable vacancy rate” of 30%. Kennedy recently lamented that it has been “treated as the redheaded stepchild at HHS” and said President Donald Trump wants him to “rectify this sad history.”

Those who received the reassignments were given until Wednesday to decide whether to accept the offer, or leave their jobs.

At the FDA, senior leaders were pushed out and offices focused on food, drug and medical device policy were hit with deep staff reductions amounting to about 3,500 agency staff members. On Friday, the agency’s top vaccine regulator, Dr. Peter Marks, was forced to resign under pressure. He lashed out at Kennedy afterward, saying the secretary “doesn’t care about the truth.”

Some FDA workers said that they discovered they had been fired when they attempted to scan their badges to get into the building early Tuesday. The office of the center director for veterinary medicine was wiped out, according to a person familiar with the cuts. That included veterinarians leading bird flu response for the agency.

Employees of several FDA labs around the United States were also let go, including those who test medical products in Detroit and San Juan, Puerto Rico, and those who test food in San Francisco and Chicago.

“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,” Dr. Robert Califf, who ran the Food and Drug Administration during the Biden administration, wrote on social media. He said “history will see this” as “a huge mistake.”

At the CDC, which Kennedy wants to pare back to focus only on infectious disease, the reorganization is likely to have immediate effects. Offices devoted to the study of other programs, including reproductive health, chronic disease and gun violence prevention, were disbanded.

Communications offices were hit particularly hard across agencies including the NIH, CDC and FDA. Renate Myles, the communications director at the National Institutes of Health, received a notice of reassignment. At the CDC, specialists in tuberculosis communications and education were laid off.

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