Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claims it was 'always the plan' to reinstate around a fifth of personnel whose jobs were 'cut' from the Department of Health and Human Services.
On March 27, as many as 10,000 scientists, doctors, inspectors and others working across the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) were notified that their positions had been terminated.
This dramatic restructuring, in accordance with US President Donald Trump’s Executive Order ‘Implementing the President’s Department of Government Efficiency’ Workforce Optimization Initiative’, was supposed to streamline the department's functions and consolidate units into 15 new divisions, as per the HSS.
"We aren't just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic," said United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., at the time.
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"This Department will do more – a lot more – at a lower cost to the taxpayer."
However, Kennedy Jr. has now said that some programs would be reinstated because they were accidentally cut, reports ABC News.
"We're streamlining the agencies. We're going to make it work for public health, make it work for the American people," he told the publication.
"In the course of that, 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."
Around 20 percent of the federal workforce laid off in the recent cuts were made in error, including an entire team dedicated to lead poisoning and prevention at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, BBC writes.
The dramatic approach to culling is being led by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and spearheaded by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
DOGE is tasked by the Trump Administration to sink the size of the federal government workforce while reducing US debt from approximately $36.22 trillion.
"Part of the DOGE, we talked about this from the beginning, is we're going to do 80 percent cuts, but 20 percent of those are going to have to be reinstated because we'll make mistakes," Kennedy Jr. told reporters in Virginia.
Regarding the recent layoffs, Erik Svendsen, who until this week ran the CDC Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice, has had his say.
"It’s been very difficult for people to understand and emotionally process," he told Politico. "With all of us gone, there’s no one who can do this work."
It’s still not clear which HSS staff will be reinstated or what functions the health department will retain.
The mass cuts have affected the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and departments working on infertility, a respiratory division protecting coal miners from pneumoconiosis, and also those working to serve the disabled and elderly.
"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 FDA commissioner Dr Robert Califf told Mass Device.
He added it was a 'dark day for public health'.
Ella Scott