The first wave of an anticipated 10,000-person reduction in force at the Department of Health and Human Services (Making HHS Healthy Again: RFK Jr. Cuts Thousands of Jobs, Nukes Multiple Divisions – RedState) kicked off this morning as employees found their key cards did not work and that layoff notices landed in their email inboxes at 5 a.m. 

Senior leaders were not immune to the Grim Reaper of the reduction in force. Some were placed on administrative leave. Others, such as Jeanne Marrazzo, who succeeded Anthony Fauci as the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Brian King, director of the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Tobacco Products, were offered transfers to the Indian Health Service, requiring moves to remote areas on Indian reservations and they had to decide by 5 p.m. Tuesday.

“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,” Robert Califf, who served as FDA commissioner under Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, wrote on LinkedIn on Tuesday morning.

This reduction in force follows the resignation in lieu of dismissal of Dr. Peter Marks, the FDA's chief vaccine regulator; see Top Vaccine Official Given the Choice to Resign or Be Fired As RFK Jr. Reshapes Public Health.

At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, entire centers were zeroed out. These include: the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion; National Center for Injury Prevention and Control; the National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention; the Global Health Center; National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities; and the National Center for Environmental Health. The National Center for Injury Prevention and Control's Division of Violence Prevention was ground zero for the CDC's long-running efforts to treat gun violence as a public health issue.

As if to underscore the point, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. used the occasion of the firings to swear in his two main deputies for reforming HHS; see Senate Confirms Two Key Trump HHS Nominees in Close Votes – RedState.

But as staff members reeled and comforted one another, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. posted a video on social media that showed him swearing in the new heads of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Martin A. Makary, and the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.

“Welcome aboard,” Mr. Kennedy said. “The revolution begins today.”

...

The restructuring is intended to bring communications and other functions directly under Mr. Kennedy, who has vowed to “make America healthy again.” It includes collapsing a number of agencies into a new division called the Administration for a Healthy America. Mr. Kennedy said last week that the department was “going to do more with less.”

Without any inside information, this is pure speculation, but it looks like the method of carrying out the reduction in force was either needlessly ruthless or HHS had an indication that if staff were given warning they would create a media-friendly incident. Sending the layoff notices at 5 a.m. and disabling key cards is not the way things are usually done.

Removing leaders en masse strips away institutional memory, experience, and expertise, he and others say. “A more reasonable approach would be to ask for resignations for those who have served more than 5 or 10 years rather than an across-the-board, build-from-scratch strategy,” says Robert Cook-Deegan, a policy expert at Arizona State University who has co-authored histories of NIH.

I would counter that these are not reasonable times at HHS. The leadership is deeply compromised both by its role during the COVID panic and by relations with industry and academia. The workforce is politically hostile to President Trump and to Kennedy, and most of it went along willingly as public health was used as a deliberate wedge to undermine civil liberties. RFK Jr. wants to take the agency in a very different direction, and he could not reasonably count on the leadership or the workforce for support. So, he had to build from scratch, and that is what he is doing.

Few things are harder than turning around a failing but complacent and self-satisfied organization. We've chronicled the challenges facing Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, but those facing RFK, Jr., at HHS are every bit as daunting. The science is politicized. The health of Americans is a distant second to Pharma share prices. Agencies are more interested in political control than public health. Follow RedState for some of the most informed coverage on his efforts to recreate a force in crisis. Join RedState VIP and help continue that coverage. Use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your membership.