The Trump administration began mass layoffs of 10,000 staffers at US health agencies yesterday, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation, with security guards barring entry to some employees just hours after they received dismissal notices.
The cuts, which affect several high-profile agencies under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), are part of a broad plan by President Donald Trump and billionaire ally Elon Musk to shrink the federal government and slash spending.
Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has described the cuts as essential to streamlining a bloated bureaucracy.
However they have included the ouster of top scientists overseeing public health, cancer research and vaccine and drug approvals, raising concerns about how the US will respond to health emergencies, such as the ongoing measles outbreak and spreading bird flu.
According to US media reports, several senior officials from these agencies, including Jeanne Marrazzo, who had replaced Anthony Fauci as head of one of the NIH’s branches, have been offered reassignment to isolated locations in Alaska or Oklahoma.
Departures at the FDA, considered the world’s top drugs regulator, included Peter Stein, the director of the Office of New Drugs in its Centre for Drug Evaluation and Research division.
He resigned when faced with being fired, according to one source familiar with the matter.
Brian King, the head of the FDA’s Centre for Tobacco Products division, was fired, according to an e-mail sent by King to FDA staff seen by Reuters.
That followed the ouster of Peter Marks, the FDA’s highly regarded top vaccine official.
Staff have also been leaving and some employees reviewing products say they are struggling to meet their deadlines.
“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,” former commissioner Robert Califf wrote in a LinkedIn post.
“I believe that history will see this a huge mistake,” he wrote. “It will be interesting to hear from the new leadership how they plan to put ‘Humpty Dumpty’ back together again.”
An FDA employee said staff had to present their badges at the building entrance and those who had been fired were given a ticket and told to return home, according to one source.
People waited in line for hours not knowing what would happen when they reached the front.
The ticket, seen by Reuters, listed telephone numbers for 10 different departments for employees to call to retrieve their “essential” equipment.
An FDA staff member said 17 employees in the press office were let go.
The FDA’s chief information officer Vid Desai said he was also let go.
Fired staff received e-mails that said their terminations did not reflect on their service, performance or conduct, according to an e-mail seen by Reuters.
Cuts at the FDA’s Centre for Tobacco Products (CTP) included the Office of Management and Office of Regulations in their entirety, said the centre’s former director, Mitch Zeller, citing a contact still at the centre.
“I think that this makes it virtually impossible for CTP to regulate tobacco products,” Zeller said.
A line of cars clogged the two main roads leading into the NIH’s main campus in Bethesda, Maryland, where employees had been notified early yesterday morning that they were laid off, according to a source.
At the CDC, staff who were fired had worked at the National Centre for Environmental Health, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and the National Centre for Immunisation and Respiratory Diseases, including at least one person working on the federal response to measles outbreaks, according to another source.
“What I think is clear and that people should understand is that HHS touches the lives of just about every American and a reorganisation and downsizing of this size would typically take months on months of work,” said Kevin Griffis, who resigned on March 21 as CDC director of communications.
A health official said employees who worked directly for the HHS were also fired. HHS officials were not immediately available for comment.
The line to get into the Rockville, Maryland HHS building that houses the Health Resources and Services Administration, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the Indian Health Service stretched all the way to the parking lot, two sources told Reuters, with only two security guards on site screening everyone attempting to enter.
Including early retirements and so-called “deferred resignations”, the total downsizing will reduce the department’s workforce from 82,000 to 62,000 employees, according to an official statement last week, saving an estimated $1.8bn annually – a tiny fraction of the HHS annual budget of $1.8tn.
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