US President Donald Trump
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Washibgton: A "policy lab" that generates ideas to improve mental health. An office that studies the effects of smoking. A team of scientists and public health experts who focus on birth defects.
All three are programs in the Department of Health and Human Services that were created by Congress, which funds them. And all three have been hollowed out by mass layoffs at the agency ordered by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, the billionaire adviser leading the federal government's cost-cutting efforts.
Since Tuesday, when the layoffs began, lawmakers, medical associations, research universities and state health agencies have scrambled to sort out which jobs were eliminated, and how to respond. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has already admitted that some workers were mistakenly fired alongside nearly 20 per cent of the agency's workforce and has promised that they will be reinstated.
The Republican chair and top Democrat on the Senate health committee asked Kennedy to testify about the cuts next week, but it is not clear if he has accepted the invitation. One thing is clear: The layoffs and wholesale reorganization of the department are the latest in a series of Trump administration actions ripe for legal challenges.
The administration has been on shaky ground, legal experts said, in dissolving agencies created and funded by Congress.
Max Stier, the president of Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit that promotes best practices in government, said that the administration had overstepped its authority.
"It's going to be a question for the courts to resolve," Stier said.
The scope of the latest layoffs at the health department -- 10,000 people, on top of 10,000 others who had been fired or had left voluntarily -- has set the department apart from other federal agencies that have seen similar staff reductions since the start of Trump's second term.
The agency has been left with the same congressionally mandated responsibilities overseeing a $1.8 trillion budget, most of it devoted to mandatory spending programs like Medicare.
The department runs more than 100 other programs that, through drug regulation, biomedical research, hospital reimbursement and child welfare initiatives, touch the lives of every American family. In many cases, those initiatives now have no staff members to administer them.