The Secretary of Health and Human Services has said ‘we’ll make mistakes’ amid federal government downsizing
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asserts that reinstating approximately 20% of the staff who were laid off from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was “always part of the plan.”
On March 27, a sweeping decision led to the termination of up to 10,000 roles across the HHS, impacting scientists, doctors, inspectors, and other personnel. This move was part of a major restructuring effort under President Donald Trump’s Executive Order, titled Implementing the President’s Department of Government Efficiency Workforce Optimization Initiative. The goal was to streamline the department’s operations and reorganize it into 15 new divisions, aiming for greater efficiency.
At the time, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended the initiative, emphasizing, “We aren’t just trimming bureaucratic excess; we are reshaping the organization to better align with our core mission and focus on reversing the chronic disease epidemic.”
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“This Department will do more – a lot more – at a lower cost to the taxpayer,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. confidently declared.
However, Kennedy Jr. has now revealed that some programs will be reinstated after being mistakenly cut, according to ABC News. “We’re streamlining the agencies to make them more efficient, ensuring they work for public health and benefit the American people,” he explained.
“In the process, we realized that certain studies that should have remained were mistakenly cut, and we’ve brought them back. Personnel who were let go in error are also being reinstated – and that was always the plan,” he added.
Approximately 20% of the federal workforce laid off in the recent cuts were affected by such errors, including an entire team at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention dedicated to lead poisoning and prevention, as reported by BBC.
This sweeping reduction is being overseen by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an initiative led by Tesla CEO Elon Musk. DOGE has been tasked by the Trump Administration with trimming the size of the federal workforce while working to reduce the U.S. debt, which currently stands at a staggering $36.22 trillion.
“Part of the DOGE initiative, as we discussed from the outset, was to implement 80% cuts, but we knew 20% of those would need to be reinstated due to inevitable mistakes,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. explained to reporters in Virginia.
In the wake of the recent layoffs, Erik Svendsen, who had led the CDC Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice until this week, shared his concerns. “It’s been incredibly difficult for people to process emotionally,” he told Politico. “With all of us gone, there’s no one left to carry out this crucial work.”
As of now, it remains unclear which HHS staff members will be reinstated or which functions the department will continue to operate.
The sweeping cuts have had far-reaching impacts, affecting the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), divisions working on infertility, a respiratory division dedicated to protecting coal miners from pneumoconiosis, and teams serving the disabled and elderly.
“The FDA, as we’ve known it, is effectively finished. Most of the leaders with deep institutional knowledge and expertise in product development and safety are no longer employed,” former FDA commissioner Dr. Robert Califf stated to Mass Device. He called it a “dark day for public health.”
