Widespread firings start at federal health agencies including many in leadership
www.npr.org

... The Trump administration began sending notices of termination to thousands of staffers at federal health agencies Tuesday, according to interviews with employees and officials at multiple agencies and e-mails reviewed by NPR.

The Department of Health and Human Services last week announced it planned to dismiss 10,000 people. These cuts come on top of around 10,000 people already leaving the agencies under the Trump administration's Fork in the Road offer and early retirement.

Termination emails went out Tuesday morning to employees and leadership of agencies within HHS, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as several smaller agencies.

Many of those workers only found out they had been fired when they tried to badge into the building after waiting in line and couldn't get in, NPR learned from multiple sources at HHS who didn't want to share their names for fear of repercussions.

On Thursday, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement that the layoffs were intended to reduce "bureaucratic sprawl." "We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic," he said.

But agency staff and leaders in the field say the cuts are a blow to public health, medicine and biomedical research in the U.S. ...