Firings ensued at the Department of Health and Human Services as employees began receiving notice of their dismissal on Tuesday morning.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced this month his intent to slash 20,000 jobs from the massive agency – with half coming from voluntary retirements and buyouts and the other half being laid off.
In a move inspired by President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), HHS staff will be cut by nearly a quarter, bringing it from 82,000 down to a total of 62,000.
Most of the gutting will be felt at the Food and Drug Administration with 3,500 at that division being fired. The FDA is responsible for inspecting, setting and regulating safety standards for food, medications and medical devices in the U.S.
And the second largest number of cuts are being made at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where 2,400 are facing firings.
Meanwhile, another 1,200 jobs are being slashed at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and 300 from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, according to a breakdown of the cuts published on Thursday.
Dismissal and layoff notices began going out to HHS employees on Tuesday amid Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s initiative to slash the department’s workforce by 20,000
Activists rallied outside the HHS building in Washington, D.C. on February 19 in protest of DOGE funding freezes on research
HHS has vowed that no one receiving Medicare or Medicaid benefits will be impacted by the job cuts.
Federal employees at the bloated agency started receiving their dismissal notices to their inboxes on Tuesday just one day after President Trump moved to strip government workers of their collective bargaining rights.
RFK Jr. wants to consolidate divisions of his department that oversee billions in addiction services and community health centers in his newly established Administration for a Healthy America.
Some 10,000 workers already took early retirement and voluntary separation offers at HHS. Another 10,000 are being fired in the latest round of DOGE-inspired cuts.
In a six-minute video posted to X last week, Kennedy says he will reduce the number of HHS divisions to 15 from the current 28 and reduce the number of regional offices from 10 to five.
‘We’re going to do more with less,’ he vowed. ‘No American is going to be left behind.’
‘We’re going to consolidate all of these departments and make them accountable to you, the American taxpayer and the American patient.’
An HHS press release on the job cuts claims the measure will save the department $1.8 billion annually.
Kennedy lamented that while the HHS budget and workforce has inflated in recent years, so have the rates of cancer and other chronic diseases. He also noted that Americans’ life spans have dropped despite a bigger focus on the health agency.
Most of the cuts are aimed at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
He plans to create a new division within HHS called the Administration for a Healthy America. It will serve key functions and focus on ‘safe, wholesome food, clean water, and the elimination of environmental toxins,’ according to the HHS release on the overhaul.
RFK Jr. is highly controversial even among some Republican circles due to his anti-vaccine stance. But he was confirmed earlier this year to lead the department tasked with handling at the federal level Americans’ healthcare, medicine and vaccine regulations and other key health-related recommendations.
He vowed to ‘Make America Healthy Again’ (MAHA) by eliminating unnecessary and potentially dangerous substances in food and giving more freedom to Americans to make their own health-related decisions – like getting vaccines or seeking alternative medicines in their healthcare network.
A lifelong Democrat, Kennedy switched party affiliations to independent in 2023 and was running in the 2024 presidential election before he backed Trump’s bid and helped spearhead the MAHA movement.
