The reductions in force are rounding into form. On Thursday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., announced a dramatic reorganization of the department that includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. It will involve firing 10,000 people, which along with retirements and other previous cuts brings the total to around 20,000, or about a quarter of where the department stood before the axe began to fall.
A source told Splinter that of the 10,000 total cuts at HHS, about 1,200 will come from NIH. An email viewed by Splinter indicated that the primary targets across HHS will include “administrative positions including human resources, information technology, procurement, and finance,” though they will also go after “roles in high-cost regions” and employees they consider redundant.
As one source at NIH said, though: “No one knows (or is telling us) who is making the decision.” And another pointed out that “high-cost regions” could very well include the Washington, D.C., area, where NIH is primarily located.
RFK Jr. managed to jab at the employees he is firing for no real reason once more in his press release: “Over time, bureaucracies like HHS become wasteful and inefficient even when most [emphasis mine] of their staff are dedicated and competent civil servants.” He claimed that the new HHS “will do more – a lot more – at a lower cost to the taxpayer,” which is unequivocally preposterous. Along with his efforts to kneecap his entire agency, Kennedy has spent his early days as Secretary undermining vaccine research and uptake, making kids sick with measles even more sick, and generally undercutting scientific expertise and understanding wherever he can.
The RIF will include cutting a number of sub-agencies and repurposing them under a new roof, the Administration for a Healthy America. Those include the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH), the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Though the details aren’t yet fully clear, the NIH’s 27 institutes and centers will likely be cut almost in half.
While Pete Hegseth and his “warfighting” cronies have been giving him a run for it this week, Kennedy will retain the Least Qualified Cabinet Member title belt until someone starts World War III. The benefits of the things he wants to kill — vaccines, biomedical research in general, public health — are so astronomically high that even anyone else’s worst-case scenario might not dethrone him.
GET SPLINTER RIGHT IN YOUR INBOX
The Truth Hurts
