DOGE finally came for HHS on Tuesday.
Emails blasted out early in the morning indicated termination of employment for 10,000 employees of the Department of Health and Human Services, including sub-agencies like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The notices were sent at such an early hour that many employees did not see them overnight, and showed up to work Tuesday as normal. Long lines of staffers appeared outside of offices around the District of Columbia and elsewhere around the country
"I'm overwhelmed with messages about the firings. The FDA as we've known it is finished," wrote former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Dr Robert Carliff.
Experts lamented that entire teams representing deep institutional knowledge of public health were being wiped out by the cuts. Rebuilding what is being lost will be a challenge.
"At some point in the future, a Democratic President and Secretary of HHS will probably try to rebuild the department following the major staffing cuts happening now. It won't be easy, and will likely require Congress," wrote Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF (formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation).
"The general public likely won't feel the results of these HHS layoffs immediately," Levitt added. "But eventually, these layoffs will affect the health information available to people, access to care and prevention, and oversight of health and social services."
On Capitol Hill, the news caught lawmakers (once again) on the back foot. Leaders of the Senate HELP committee sent a letter urging HHS director Robert F. Kennedy Jr to testify on the cuts on April 10 — the Republican chair of the committee, Bill Cassidy, couldn't say what the scale of the cuts would be.
Staffers with the House Oversight Committee also passed out "whistleblower materials" to fired employees lined up Tuesday morning outside HHS buildings.
Read more here.
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