Even those who marveled at the Trump administration’s mass firings in recent months were stunned by this week’s personnel bloodbath at the Department of Health and Human Services. Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. carried out layoffs throughout the nation’s public health infrastructure, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health.
An NBC News report noted that the Republican team also made “deep and wide-ranging cuts to divisions responsible for tackling HIV, improving minority health and preventing injury, such as gun violence. Jobs were eliminated at offices overseeing the approval of new drugs, providing health insurance and responding to infectious disease outbreaks.”
The Bulwark’s Jonathan Cohn added, “The sheer breadth of the cuts is staggering: The layoffs affected agencies that exist to fight deadly pathogens, to protect the nation’s drug supply, to finance and carry out cutting-edge research — along with countless other divisions and offices that touch everything from rural health to early childhood care.”
That was Tuesday. Two days later, as The New York Times reported, RFK Jr. started undoing some of what he’d done.
After moving to fire 10,000 employees at the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, said that ‘some programs’ that were cut in the mass firings ‘were being reinstated,’ including one branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that monitors and works to reduce lead levels among children.
A sign of the times: I find it oddly reassuring that the HHS secretary — a notorious conspiracy theorist with a history of bizarre beliefs about science and medicine — agrees that lead poisoning is unhealthy for kids. (Given that Kennedy has suggested that measles can be good for people, this was by no means a given.)
The Cabinet secretary specifically told ABC News, “There were a number of instances where studies that should have not have been cut were cut, and we’ve reinstated them. Personnel that should not have been cut were cut — we’re reinstating them, and that was always the plan.”
Really? It was “always the plan” to scrap much of the nation’s public health infrastructure, only to reverse course on part of the agenda 48 hours later? Why would anyone come up with such a “plan”?
We don’t yet know exactly how many officials have been brought back at HHS, but it’s worth pausing to note the familiarity of these circumstances. Team Trump fired National Nuclear Security Administration officials and then rehired them (or at least tried to rehire them). Team Trump also fired CDC officials working on bird flu and then rehired them. Team Trump also fired National Park Service officials and then rehired them. Team Trump also fired officials at the FDA who work on medical device safety and then rehired them. About a month ago, The New York Times published a related list of other federal workers who were fired and rehired — in some instances, within days — and the list wasn’t especially short. A month later, that tally is still growing, reinforcing concerns that these guys simply don’t know what they’re doing, “that was always the plan” rhetoric notwithstanding.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
Latest Post
Recommended
