WASHINGTON - The Trump administration launched a mass firing of 10,000 U.S. health care agency employees on Tuesday, with security barring some employees from entering just hours after they received notice of the layoffs, according to several sources familiar with the situation.
The cuts, which affect several high-ranking agencies under the Department of Health and Human Services, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), are part of a sweeping plan by US President Donald Trump and billionaire ally Elon Musk to shrink the federal government and cut spending.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has described the cuts, which along with other recent departures will reduce the total number of employees from 82,000 to 62,000, as necessary to streamline an overburdened bureaucracy.
However, these changes have included the removal of top scientists who oversaw public health, cancer research and the approval of vaccines and drugs, raising concerns about how the US will respond to health emergencies such as the ongoing measles epidemic and the spreading bird flu.
"We sympathise with those who have lost their jobs. But the reality is clear: what we have been doing is not working," Kennedy wrote on X, adding that the changes are necessary so that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) can focus on its core mission of preventing chronic disease.
Peter Stein, director of the Office of New Drugs in the Division of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, has left the FDA. He resigned Tuesday when he was threatened with firing, according to a source familiar with the matter.
According to an email sent by King to FDA employees and seen by Reuters, Brian King, the head of the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) division, has been fired. This followed the dismissal of Peter Marks, the FDA's highly regarded top vaccine official.
Employees are also leaving, and some employees who review products say they are having trouble meeting deadlines.
"The FDA as we knew it is over, most of the senior executives with institutional knowledge and deep expertise in product development and safety are no longer employed," former commissioner Robert Califf wrote in a LinkedIn post.
"I believe that history will consider this [a] huge mistake," he wrote. "It will be interesting to hear from the new management how they plan to put 'Humpty Dumpty' back together again."
Long queues
In downtown Washington, employees were informed by security that they were being released when they tried to enter the Mary Switzer Building, which houses several HHS offices and departments, an employee at the scene told Reuters.
"Dozens of people have been laid off this way so far," the employee said, using the acronym for "workforce reduction." Among them was a deaf person who had to be told by a security guard on the phone that she was FIRED. "So now it's fallen on security to tell people they've lost their jobs," the employee said.
An FDA employee said employees had to show their ID at the entrance to the building and those who were dismissed were given a ticket and told to go home. People waited in line for hours, not knowing what would happen when they got to the front of the building.
The ticket, seen by Reuters, listed phone numbers for ten different departments where employees were to call to pick up their "essential" equipment.
An FDA employee said that 17 employees in the press department have been laid off. The FDA's director of information, Vid Desai, said he was also fired.
According to an email seen by Reuters, the dismissed employees received emails stating that the terminations did not reflect their service, performance or conduct and that they were placed on administrative leave. One source said the leave reflects the union's request for a 60-day notice.
The cuts to the FDA's CTP division affected the entire Office of Management and the Office of Regulations, former center director Mitch Zeller said, citing a contact person who still works at the center.
"I think it makes it virtually impossible for the CTP to regulate tobacco products," Zeller said.
Two major roads leading to the NIH main campus in Bethesda, Maryland, where employees were told early Tuesday morning that they were being laid off, were clogged by a line of cars, according to a source.
Jeanne Marrazz, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who succeeded Anthony Fauci, has been fired from her post and offered a job with the Indian Health Service, sources who confirmed her departure with sources inside the NIH said.
The cuts came on the first day in office for FDA Commissioner Marty Makary and NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, who were confirmed by the U.S. Senate last week.
At CDC, the laid-off employees worked at the National Center for Environmental Health, the Office of Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services, and the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, including at least one person who worked on the federal measles response, according to another source.
A health care official said employees who worked directly for HHS were also laid off.
Two sources told Reuters that the line to enter the HHS building in Rockville, Maryland, stretched from the front door to the parking lot, with only two security guards on site to check anyone trying to enter.
CMG/Reuters
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