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food and drug administration
'Abdication of Your Sworn Duty': Senate Dems Grill RFK Jr on Mass Firing of Health Workers
They warn cuts "will endanger children, seniors, and at-risk communities, set medical progress back by decades, curtail patient access to care, and make the nation less prepared for emerging public health threats."
Feb 21, 2025
Senate Democrats on Friday demanded answers from U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. regarding the purge of more than 5,000 agency workers after HHS "blindly followed" a "baseless directive" by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency that the lawmakers said is "blatantly undermining Americans' health and safety."
In one
letter to Kennedy signed by all 45 Democratic senators plus Independent Sens. Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the lawmakers said that "as HHS secretary, the consequences of epidemics, lost treatments, and lack of access to care are your responsibility."
"The Trump administration is firing staff and harming programs that Americans rely on every day."
"These firings represent the abdication of your sworn duty to ensure the health and well-being of America's families," the letter states. "You have an obligation to the American people, who rely on you as the nation's top public health official, to stop these ill-conceived and dangerous attacks on agencies and programs that Americans rely on every day."
"These uninformed, baseless firings will reportedly continue across HHS under your leadership," the senators continued. "The Trump administration is firing staff and harming programs that Americans rely on every day, and these arbitrary cuts will endanger children, seniors, and at-risk communities, set medical progress back by decades, curtail patient access to care, and make the nation less prepared for emerging public health threats."
The lawmakers want to know:
- How many HHS employees were fired between January 20, 2025 and February 18, 2025?
- How many of these employees were probationary?
- How were HHS employees notified that they were being fired, and on what grounds?
- What, if any, analysis was conducted prior to firings to determine the immediate and long-term impact they will have?
- What role did the Department of Government Efficiency have in identifying or prioritizing employees for termination?
- What metrics did DOGE use in doing so?
- What specific guidance was given to HHS for identifying additional employees to lay off?
Roll Callreported that Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.), and Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.) also sent Kennedy a letter on Friday, this one expressing concern that mass firings at the Food and Drug Administration—an HHS agency—could adversely affect food safety and drug and medical device approvals.
"Without adequate staff at each center that receives user fees, the FDA may not be able to collect or spend user fees for the upcoming fiscal year," the lawmakers wrote, according to Roll Call. "This would be seriously detrimental to our medical drug and device programs by slowing the premarket review process, stifling innovation and preventing patients from accessing potentially lifesaving products."
Ten Senate Democrats so far have also signed a letter to Trump condemning the looming layoff of hundreds of staff at the Indian Health Service (IHS)—another HHS agency—amidst a healthcare worker shortage in Indigenous communities across the nation.
"Not only will this lead to worse health outcomes, but overall costs will also rise," the letter argues. "With less healthcare services at existing IHS facilities, there will be increased Purchased Referred Care referrals. This will increase costs for the federal government and require increased travel, accommodations, and expenses, creating increased hardships and barriers for patients and families seeking care far from where they live on tribal lands."
The lawmakers' letters come as thousands of federal workers—especially those employed under probationary conditions—are being fired from their jobs, many under what critics claim are false pretexts of poor performance.
The HHS layoffs also come amid
fears that Trump will not protect Medicare after the president's Thursday endorsement of a plan by GOP House lawmakers that would slash social spending so severely that even far-right Sen. Josh Hawley (D-Mo.) has warned against it. This, in order to fund an extension of the president's 2017 "tax scam" that primarily benefited the wealthy.
Early Friday, Senate Republicans
approved a separate and narrower budget resolution after rejecting Democratic amendments to avert cuts to federal health and other social programs.
'Blatant Conflict': Fired FDA Workers Were Reviewing Musk's Neuralink
"DOGE operatives should stop interfering with the FDA's public health mission of assuring the safety and effectiveness of drugs and medical devices," said a doctor at one watchdog group.
Feb 19, 2025
A U.S. watchdog group and other critics are responding with alarm to reporting that federal employees reviewing applications related to a brain implant developed by Elon Musk's company Neuralink are among those fired as part of the billionaire and President Donald Trump's sweeping mission to gut the government workforce.
Despite business conflicts and a recent White House court declaration that generated some confusion, Musk is the head of Trump's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has infiltrated and is working to purge employees from several agencies—including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), according toReuters.
Citing two unnamed sources, the news agency reported Monday that "the cuts included about 20 people in the FDA's Office of Neurological and Physical Medicine Devices, several of whom worked on Neuralink... That division includes reviewers overseeing clinical trial applications by Neuralink and other companies making so-called brain-computer interface devices."
While the sources "said they did not believe the employees were specifically targeted because of their work on Neuralink's applications," they and other experts warned the firings "will hamper the agency's ability to quickly and safely process medical device applications of all sorts," Reuters noted.
Dr. Robert Steinbrook, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, said in Wednesday statement that "regardless of the reasons the FDA medical device center employees were fired, Elon Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency have a blatant conflict of interest because the agency's Center for Devices and Radiological Health is regulating the implantable brain-computer interface made by one of Musk's companies."
"Moreover, by eviscerating the FDA's device staff, DOGE operatives are impeding the vital work of protecting the participants in the Neuralink trial and protecting the public from medical devices that are harmful or don't work," he continued. "Paradoxically, with fewer staff, the FDA's review of the Neuralink device may be impeded, which makes no sense."
"DOGE operatives should stop interfering with the FDA's public health mission of assuring the safety and effectiveness of drugs and medical devices," Steinbrook added. "This is yet the latest example of how Musk's involvement with DOGE undermines federal regulators, from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to the FDA."
Various reports from the past month have highlighted how Trump's return to power has benefited Musk and his businesses, including SpaceX and the publicly traded electric vehicle maker Tesla.
As Gizmododetailed Tuesday:
Neuralink in particular seems to have benefited from efforts to squash watchdogs. Last month, the inspector general at the U.S. Department of Agriculture had to be removed from her office by security after refusing to comply with her termination, which she believed was illegal. She happened to be heading up an investigation into Neuralink looking into whether the company was violating animal welfare rules related to its tests on animal subjects.
The FDA, too, has been looking into similar issues. Last year, the agency found that Neuralink's animal labs engaged in "objectionable conditions or practices" and urged the company to address the issues—but did not issue any punitive actions related to the investigation.
Neuralink and the FDA also had a standoff over allowing the company to move forward with human trials, a request that the FDA rejected over safety risks in 2022 before finally allowing limited trials to move forward a year later. In 2024, the FDA even gave Neuralink its "breakthrough device" designation, which allows for a speedier review process. The only thing faster might be no review at all.
A Quinnipiac University national poll released Wednesday shows that 50% of registered voters across the political spectrum have an unfavorable opinion of Musk, 54% disapprove of the richest person on Earth "playing a prominent role in the Trump administration," and 55% think he "has too much power in making decisions affecting the United States."
'How Does This Help Working People?' Fury Over Trump Mass Firing of Health Workforce
"This incompetence and arson is about to hit Americans in multiple ways," said one senator.
Feb 17, 2025
Reducing the price of groceries—a key campaign promise made by U.S. President Donald Trump—has thus far ranked low on his administration's list of priorities, but mass firings at numerous federal health agencies over the weekend suggested that scaling back efforts to ensure proper nutrition for infants, the safety of medical devices, and better maternal health outcomes are all part of Trump's upside-down vision for improving Americans' lives.
Roughly 3,600 federal employees across the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and other agencies were out of a job Monday after receiving emails over the weekend claiming that their "performance has not been adequate to justify further employment" in the federal government.
The terminations targeted probationary employees—those who have been working in their positions for less than a year—and came amid the spread of bird flu, or H5N1, among wild bird flocks and commercial poultry across the country.
The Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which works to prevent and prepare for public health emergencies and oversees pandemic stockpiles, was among the offices hit.
In a separate action, 25% of staffers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's program office for its network of animal research laboratories were fired. The National Animal Health Laboratory Network program office manages data related to the protocols followed by federal labs across the country, ensuring that scientists can accurately track animal diseases like bird flu.
"On top of firings at the USDA national testing lab this weekend too... this is VERY BAD," said Michigan state Rep. Carrie Rheingans (D-47) of the ASPR firings.
The spread of H5N1 among millions of birds, alongside price-gouging by corporate giants, has been linked to the skyrocketing price of eggs—a topic Trump raised frequently on the campaign trail and said he would address promptly when he took office.
About two dozen workers at the CDC's Laboratory Leadership Service (LLS), a fellowship program that trains scientist to detect and address public health threats, were also among those who were swept up in the HHS purge led by the Department of Government Efficiency, the advisory body run by billionaire Trump donor Elon Musk.
"We have come up with a new slogan for LLS: 'the disease detectors,'" one fellow told NBC News. "If you're not testing, you don't know what disease is there."
The series of health agency firings came as a tuberculosis outbreak has caused recent alarm in Kansas and an ongoing measles outbreak in Texas spread to at least 49 people, with more than a dozen school-age children hospitalized and officials warning 200-300 people could currently be infected.
At Food Safety News, Dr. Peter G. Lurie, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, wrote that the widespread purge of federal employees will likely "make it harder to recruit qualified staff to fill the roles moving forward"—with consequences for people across the country who rely on the work of experts in public health and nutrition.
"Many candidates with high qualifications will likely opt not to work for a new boss whose vision for progress includes the arbitrary mass elimination of new employees," wrote Lurie. "The FDA has struggled in recent years to recruit and retain qualified staff with expertise in topics like infant nutrition, where specialized training may be critical to make policy decisions affecting millions of Americans."
While Congress recently tried to address staffing difficulties by granting new hiring authorities to the FDA, "new employees brought in recently could be subject to cuts, impacting current teams and making it harder to recruit moving forward," wrote Lurie.
One policy analyst at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, Arielle Kane, toldPolitico that before she received a termination email on Saturday she was working on a pilot program for Medicaid in 15 states aimed at improving maternal health outcomes. Other fired employees had been working to implement a ban on surprise medical bills which was passed during Trump's first term.
" Donald Trump fired the people who make sure you and your parents get the healthcare you need," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). "The people who make sure medical devices are safe for you to use. The people who approve the lifesaving drugs you rely on. How does this help working people?"
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said the mass firings underscored the "multiple ways" in which the Trump administration's "incompetence and arson is about to hit Americans."
The mass firings came days after anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed as Trump's secretary of health and human services after confirmation hearings in which he appeared to confuse Medicaid and Medicare and refused to affirm that vaccines do not cause autism—a debunked claim he has amplified in the past.
"On day one, the new HHS secretary is gutting the agencies that would be necessary to 'make America healthy again,'" Reshma Ramachandran, a Yale health professor who chairs an FDA task force, toldPolitico, referring to a slogan embraced by Kennedy.
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