Tag Archives: HHS

Axios reports: Food and Drug Administration databases that physicians and public health experts rely on for key drug safety and manufacturing information have been neglected due to DOGE-directed layoffs, leaving health professionals flying blind on basic questions about certain drugs they’re prescribing, current and former FDA officials tell Axios. Information gaps that have become a hallmark of the workforce reductions …

Politico reports: HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is weighing pulling the Covid-19 vaccine from the government’s list of recommended immunizations for children, two people familiar with the discussions told POLITICO. The directive under consideration would remove the Covid shot from the childhood vaccine schedule maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and widely used by physicians to …

Mother Jones reports: The federal government plans to eliminate services for LGBTQ youth who call 988, the national suicide and crisis hotline, according to a Health and Human Services budget draft leaked last week. Since the hotline’s launch in 2022, callers have been able to speak with counselors trained to work with specific at-risk populations, including LGBTQ youth, who are …

Reuters reports: The Food and Drug Administration is suspending a quality control program for testing of fluid milk and other dairy products due to reduced capacity in its food safety and nutrition division, according to an internal email seen by Reuters. The suspension is another disruption to the nation’s food safety programs after the termination and departure of 20,000 employees …

CNN reports: The Trump administration is considering eliminating funding for two key federal programs that help millions of low-income Americans educate their young children and heat their homes. A draft of President Donald Trump’s budget proposal for the coming fiscal year calls for ending support for Head Start, which provides early childhood education and other services to nearly 800,000 kids, …

Wired reports: Much of the IT and cybersecurity infrastructure underpinning the US health system is in danger of a possible collapse following a purge of IT staff and leadership at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), four current and former agency workers tell WIRED. This could put vast troves of public health data, including the sensitive health records …

Politico reports: The federal teams that count public health problems are disappearing — putting efforts to solve those problems in jeopardy. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s purge of tens of thousands of federal workers has halted efforts to collect data on everything from cancer rates in firefighters to mother-to-baby transmission of HIV and syphilis to outbreaks of drug-resistant gonorrhea …

The Huffington Post reports: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, told reporters Thursday that he plans to reinstate many employees and programs he began cutting last week. In head-scratching remarks, Kennedy said he knew he was firing more workers than necessary when he announced 10,000 job cuts by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government …

Reuters reports: The Trump administration’s mass firings at the FDA have removed employees critical to reviewing new medicines, setting back years of effort to bring promising treatments to patients more quickly, former and current FDA sources told Reuters. The FDA is slated to lose 3,500 employees under HHS Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s massive restructuring of U.S. health agencies that is …

Nature reports: As the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) continues to defund nearly every research project on transgender health, the White House has directed the agency to focus on studying “regret” after a person transitions to align their body with their gender identity. Several NIH employees, who were granted anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the …

NPR reports: Teams that fulfilled requests for government documents lost their jobs on Tuesday as part of the Trump administration’s 10,000-person staff cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services. Their work, mandated by Congress since the 1960s under the Freedom of Information Act or FOIA, gives the public a view of the inner workings of federal health agencies. …

Reuters reports: The Trump administration has fired staff who were working on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s bird flu response as part of its mass layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a source familiar with the situation. The Tuesday firings, which many employees learned of as they attempted to enter office buildings and were …

The Washington Post reports: Some government health employees who were laid off Tuesday were told to contact Anita Pinder with discrimination complaints. But Pinder, who was the director at the Office of Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, died last year. The inclusion of Pinder’s name in reduction-in-force notices reflects the chaos of …

Politico reports: Nine Planned Parenthood state affiliates that receive federal money from the 55-year-old Title X family planning program got notices Monday, which they shared with POLITICO, informing them that their funding is being “temporarily withheld.” The notice pointed to “possible violations” of federal civil rights law and President Donald Trump’s executive orders — including prohibitions on promotion of diversity, …

The Associated Press reports: Employees across the massive U.S. Health and Human Services Department began receiving notices of dismissal on Tuesday in an overhaul ultimately expected to lay off up to 10,000 people. The notices come just days after President Donald Trump moved to strip workers of their collective bargaining rights at HHS and other agencies throughout the government. Health …

From the Wall Street Journal editorial board: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been secretary of Health and Human Services for all of six weeks, but he’s already vindicating his critics. First he downplayed a measles outbreak in Texas. Then he reportedly hired a trial-lawyer ally to work on a government study of the link between vaccines and autism. Now he …

Politico reports: A member of Elon Musk’s DOGE team — fired from the Treasury Department after the discovery of racist social media posts — has been working for weeks on sensitive systems at the Department of Health and Human Services, new government disclosures revealed Saturday. Marko Elez, whom Musk vowed to rehire after Trump allies pushed back on his termination, …

CBS News reports: The entire staff of the federal government’s Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy is expected to be laid off, multiple federal health officials told CBS News Friday. The moves are part of a broader restructuring plan ordered by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that involves cutting 20,000 HHS positions. Much of the …

Newsweek reports: Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on Thursday morning that his department would cut 10,000 jobs and merge sections to create a new “Administration for a Healthy America” (AHA). The cuts will hit the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and …

The Wall Street Journal reports: Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is set to significantly cut the size of the department he leads, reshaping the nation’s health agencies and closing regional offices, according to documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal. Kennedy is set to announce Thursday the planned changes, which include axing 10,000 full-time employees spread …