Tuesday was the beginning of the end for federal government public health authorities, with an early morning wave of email addresses that thousands of employees notified for approaching termination.
The entire sub-agencies at the Department of Health and Human Services are gone, according to rage and despondent and former employees who flooded Reddit board directories with first-hand accounts. The cuts have regional offices, including the IT infrastructure of the agency, and even an agency that mobilizes to natural disasters, such as hurricanes: The Administration for Strategic preparedness and reaction.
The site for that agency was already off by noon.
“I’m overwhelmed with messages about firing. The FDA, as we knew, is done, ‘wrote former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr Robert Carliff on Linkedin.
“I believe history will see that [as] A big mistake, “he said. “I’ll be glad if I’m wrong, but even then there’s no good reason to treat people in this way. It will be interesting to hear from the new leadership how they intend to put ‘Humpty Dumpty’ back together.
Lines appear outside HHS offices in Washington, DC as well as at regional offices across the country. It has already been confirmed that six regional offices were closed in March. Many employees seem to learn from their terminations in real time when they arrive for work.
On Tuesday, it appeared that hundreds of employees had missed the early morning email that announced the terminations and were ushered in to see if their security badges were still giving access.
It seems that cutting administrative departments with the agencies, including communications staff, have hit especially hard.
Robert F Kennedy Jr., the country’s health secretary, has not yet issued a public statement early Tuesday afternoon about the email address for power. However, the secretary was in Washington, and celebrated the curse of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya as director of the National Institutes of Health and Dr. Marty Makary as head of the FDA.
Democrats in the home supervisory committee said members have staff outside of various HHS offices in the District of Columbia who passed on “whistle -blowing sources” to fired employees.
Congress Republicans, meanwhile, have captured on the back foot again.
“I try to understand it,” Senator Bill Cassidy, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, told CNN.
“They say they consolidate duplicating agencies,” the senator added. He did not take a position on supporting the cuts, which has a total of about 10,000 HHS employees.
Cory Booker, a New Jersey democratic senator, still spoke as part of a marathon speech on the Senate’s floor he started on Monday night to reduce the Republican threats for Medicaid and the effects of the campaign of the Department of Government’s effectiveness to reduce the size of the federal government. With a few assists from other Democrats, the senator lasted the afternoon, more than 18 hours – the longest in the history of the Senate.
Booker’s faux filibuster, who did not block legislation, followed a decision by a number of democratic colleagues from the senator to break a democratic filibuster in March on a financing bill.
Since many employees themselves are uncertain about the extent of cutting the country’s public health authority and some are likely to dispute their terminations in court, it is not yet in stone that will be the final toll of Tuesday’s reduction.
But it is clear that Elon Musk’s Doge effort continues to move a major pace over the federal government, fearlessly by constant efforts to mitigate his work.
Experts warn that rebuilding will take a lot more time.
“At some point in the future, a democratic president and secretary of HHS is likely to try to rebuild the department to the large staff that is now taking place. It will not be easy, and will probably require the congress,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF (formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation).
“The general public is unlikely to feel the results of these HHS deductions immediately,” Levitt added. “But in the end, this dismissal will affect the health information available to people, access to care and prevention, and oversee health and social services.”
