Latest news with #HHS
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Health
- Yahoo
HHS carries out mass firings across health agencies after Supreme Court decision
Thousands of employees across US federal health agencies received an email Monday afternoon telling them they were out of a job as of the close of business. The firings were originally communicated April 1 for most of the included employees, but they'd been delayed as a legal battle played out. That culminated in a US Supreme Court decision July 8 that, the US Department of Health and Human Services said in the email, means the agency 'is now permitted to move forward with a portion of its [reduction in force].' 'You are hereby notified that you are officially separated from HHS at the close of business on July 14, 2025,' read Monday's notice to dismissed HHS employees, according to copies obtained by CNN. 'Thank you for your service to the American people.' 'HHS previously announced our plans to transform this department to Make America Healthy Again and we intend to do just that,' HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said in an email to CNN after the Supreme Court's ruling last week. In a reorganization announced March 27, HHS eliminated 10,000 employees across agencies including the US Food and Drug Administration, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US National Institutes of Health; some have since gotten their jobs back, but the number losing employment Monday is in the thousands, a spokesperson for the agency confirmed. Some of those 10,000, though, are protected at least temporarily under a different court case, New York v. Kennedy, and are not being separated immediately, the spokesperson said. That includes employees at six units of the CDC — the National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention; the National Center for Environmental Health; the Division of Reproductive Health; the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health; the Office on Smoking and Health; and the National Center for Birth Defects and Development Disabilities — the Center for Tobacco Products at the FDA; the Office of Head Start; and the Division of Data and Technical Analysis under the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. 'All employees previously notified on April 1 have been separated, except for those' to whom the temporary protection in New York v. Kennedy applies, the HHS spokesperson said. In that case, Judge Melissa DuBose of US District Court in Rhode Island granted a preliminary injunction request this month from a coalition of 19 states and the District of Columbia to halt the March 27 reorganization plan. Last week, the administration asked DuBose to narrow her ruling to the divisions cited by the HHS spokesperson, but the judge has yet to rule on that request. The layoffs will probably be challenged in court given that many HHS workers are still protected by DuBose's order, but the agency could argue that the Supreme Court ruling allows it to reduce staff, said Michael Fallings, a managing partner at Tully Rinckey who specializes in federal employment law. Also Monday, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to proceed with mass layoffs at another agency – the Department of Education – for now. The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by a teachers union, school districts, states and education groups. Within two hours of that decision, the department sent notices to employees indicating that it's immediately resuming its plans and that the workers would be let go on August 1. 'They seem to be emboldened by the recent Supreme Court decisions that have been green-lighting the Trump administration's actions that other courts have stayed,' said Andrew Twinamatsiko, a director of the Center for Health Policy and the Law at the O'Neill Institute at Georgetown University, of HHS proceeding with the layoffs. In last week's Supreme Court ruling, the justices allowed federal agencies to proceed with their reduction-in-force, or RIF, plans, putting on hold a lower court order that had temporarily blocked President Donald Trump from taking those steps without approval from Congress. But the justices noted that 'we express no view on the legality of any Agency RIF and Reorganization Plan,' leaving open the possibility that it could rule against a specific agency's layoff plan in the future if the reductions appeared to make it impossible for the department to carry out its obligation under the law. Filed by a coalition of more than a dozen unions, nonprofits and local governments, that case stemmed from an executive order Trump signed in mid-February that kicked off the process of significantly reducing the size of federal agencies. CNN's John Fritze, Devan Cole and Sunlen Serfaty contributed to this report.
The Hill
3 hours ago
- Health
- The Hill
RFK Jr.: ‘No cuts on Medicaid' in ‘big, beautiful' law
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday refuted the existence of Medicaid cuts due to President Trump's 'big, beautiful bill.' 'First of all, there's no cuts on Medicaid. There is a — there's a diminishment of the growth rate of Medicaid, which is bankrupting our country. And by the way, the national debt is also a determinant, a social determinant, of health,' Kennedy told Fox Business Network's Larry Kudlow on his show. 'If we're leaving our kids with these giant debts, they can't afford health care. They can't afford good food,' he added. The 'big, beautiful bill' law cuts about $1 trillion from Medicaid, mostly through strict work requirements and reductions to how states can fund their Medicaid programs via provider taxes and state-directed payments. The majority of the cuts will not happen soon, but rural hospitals in particular have said they likely will have to make difficult financial decisions on which services they can afford to hold onto and which may need to be cut. Medicaid is also set to become a central issue in the fight over control of Congress during next year's midterm elections now that the 'big, beautiful bill' is law. Republicans have stated that the Medicaid cuts are required to address waste and fraud in the program, making sure 'able-bodied' adults are not taking advantage of the system.
CNN
6 hours ago
- Health
- CNN
HHS carries out mass firings across health agencies after Supreme Court decision
Thousands of employees across US federal health agencies received an email Monday afternoon telling them they were out of a job as of the close of business. The firings were originally communicated April 1 for most of the included employees, but they'd been delayed as a legal battle played out. That culminated in a US Supreme Court decision July 8 that, the US Department of Health and Human Services said in the email, means the agency 'is now permitted to move forward with a portion of its [reduction in force].' HHS eliminated 10,000 employees across agencies including the US Food and Drug Administration, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US National Institutes of Health in a reorganization announced March 27; some have since gotten their jobs back, but the number losing employment Monday is in the thousands, a spokesperson for the agency confirmed. Some of those 10,000, though, are protected at least temporarily under a different court case, NY v. Kennedy, and are not being separated immediately, the spokesperson said. That includes employees at six units of the CDC — the National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention; the National Center for Environmental Health; the Division of Reproductive Health; the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health; the Office on Smoking and Health; and the National Center for Birth Defects and Development Disabilities — the Center for Tobacco Products at the FDA; the Office of Head Start; and the Division of Data and Technical Analysis under the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. 'All employees previously notified on April 1 have been separated, except for those' to whom the temporary restraining order in NY v. Kennedy applies, the HHS spokesperson said. In that case, a US District Court judge in Rhode Island earlier this month granted a preliminary injunction request from a coalition of 19 states and the District of Columbia to halt the reorganization plan announced March 27. Last week, in a separate case, the Supreme Court allowed federal agencies to proceed with their reduction-in-force, or RIF, plans, putting on hold a lower court order that had temporarily blocked President Donald Trump from taking those steps without approval from Congress. But the justices noted that 'we express no view on the legality of any Agency RIF and Reorganization Plan,' leaving open the possibility that it could rule against a specific agency's layoff plan in the future if the reductions appeared to make it impossible for the department to carry out its obligation under the law. Filed by a coalition of more than a dozen unions, nonprofits and local governments, that case stemmed from an executive order Trump signed in mid-February that kicked off the process of significantly reducing the size of federal agencies. 'HHS previously announced our plans to transform this department to Make America Healthy Again and we intend to do just that,' HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said in an email to CNN after the Supreme Court's ruling last week. Meanwhile, the District Court of the Lower District of California is continuing to consider whether the federal agencies can continue to withhold the RIF plans from the court's view. The Trump administration is arguing that the court has 'no basis' to review the legality of the plans. Earlier Monday, the Supreme Court said Trump could proceed with his plan to carry out mass layoffs at the Department of Education, and within two hours, the department sent notices to employees indicating that it's immediately resuming its plans. The employees were told they would be let go on August 1, while HHS's terminations were nearly immediate. 'You are hereby notified that you are officially separated from HHS at the close of business on July 14, 2025,' read Monday's notice to dismissed HHS employees, according to copies obtained by CNN. 'Thank you for your service to the American people.' CNN's John Fritze, Devan Cole and Sunlen Serfaty contributed to this report.
CNN
6 hours ago
- Health
- CNN
HHS carries out mass firings across health agencies after Supreme Court decision
Thousands of employees across US federal health agencies received an email Monday afternoon telling them they were out of a job as of the close of business. The firings were originally communicated April 1 for most of the included employees, but they'd been delayed as a legal battle played out. That culminated in a US Supreme Court decision July 8 that, the US Department of Health and Human Services said in the email, means the agency 'is now permitted to move forward with a portion of its [reduction in force].' HHS eliminated 10,000 employees across agencies including the US Food and Drug Administration, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US National Institutes of Health in a reorganization announced March 27; some have since gotten their jobs back, but the number losing employment Monday is in the thousands, a spokesperson for the agency confirmed. Some of those 10,000, though, are protected at least temporarily under a different court case, NY v. Kennedy, and are not being separated immediately, the spokesperson said. That includes employees at six units of the CDC — the National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention; the National Center for Environmental Health; the Division of Reproductive Health; the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health; the Office on Smoking and Health; and the National Center for Birth Defects and Development Disabilities — the Center for Tobacco Products at the FDA; the Office of Head Start; and the Division of Data and Technical Analysis under the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. 'All employees previously notified on April 1 have been separated, except for those' to whom the temporary restraining order in NY v. Kennedy applies, the HHS spokesperson said. In that case, a US District Court judge in Rhode Island earlier this month granted a preliminary injunction request from a coalition of 19 states and the District of Columbia to halt the reorganization plan announced March 27. Last week, in a separate case, the Supreme Court allowed federal agencies to proceed with their reduction-in-force, or RIF, plans, putting on hold a lower court order that had temporarily blocked President Donald Trump from taking those steps without approval from Congress. But the justices noted that 'we express no view on the legality of any Agency RIF and Reorganization Plan,' leaving open the possibility that it could rule against a specific agency's layoff plan in the future if the reductions appeared to make it impossible for the department to carry out its obligation under the law. Filed by a coalition of more than a dozen unions, nonprofits and local governments, that case stemmed from an executive order Trump signed in mid-February that kicked off the process of significantly reducing the size of federal agencies. 'HHS previously announced our plans to transform this department to Make America Healthy Again and we intend to do just that,' HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said in an email to CNN after the Supreme Court's ruling last week. Meanwhile, the District Court of the Lower District of California is continuing to consider whether the federal agencies can continue to withhold the RIF plans from the court's view. The Trump administration is arguing that the court has 'no basis' to review the legality of the plans. Earlier Monday, the Supreme Court said Trump could proceed with his plan to carry out mass layoffs at the Department of Education, and within two hours, the department sent notices to employees indicating that it's immediately resuming its plans. The employees were told they would be let go on August 1, while HHS's terminations were nearly immediate. 'You are hereby notified that you are officially separated from HHS at the close of business on July 14, 2025,' read Monday's notice to dismissed HHS employees, according to copies obtained by CNN. 'Thank you for your service to the American people.' CNN's John Fritze, Devan Cole and Sunlen Serfaty contributed to this report.
NBC News
10 hours ago
- Health
- NBC News
Study finds no link between aluminum in vaccines and autism, asthma
Aluminum in childhood vaccines is a target of vaccine skeptics, who blame the ingredient on myriad health concerns. But a study of more than 1 million people, published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, found no link between aluminum in vaccines and an increased risk of 50 chronic conditions, including autoimmune diseases, allergies and autism. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has spread vaccine misinformation for years, said on a podcast in 2024 that aluminum in vaccines is 'extremely neurotoxic.' (An HHS spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.) Senior study author Anders Hviid said that, as a parent, he understood the concerns about vaccine safety. 'Our study addresses many of these concerns and provides clear and robust evidence for the safety of childhood vaccines. This is evidence that parents need to make the best choices for the health of their children,' said Hviid, who is a professor and the head of epidemiology research at Statens Serum Institut, a sector of the Danish Ministry of Health focused on combating and preventing infectious diseases. Hviid and his team used Denmark's nationwide registry to look for any connections between aluminum exposure from childhood vaccines and 50 chronic disorders, including 36 autoimmune disorders, nine allergy or asthma conditions, and five neurodevelopmental disorders including autism and ADHD. The study looked at more than 1.2 million people born in Denmark from 1997 through 2018 and followed them until the end of 2020. Because health records in Denmark are meticulously kept by government agencies, the researchers were also able to compare children who received more aluminum in their vaccines by age 2 compared those who received less. The study didn't include unvaccinated children. The researchers found no link between aluminum in childhood vaccines and any of the 50 conditions. Ross Kedl, a professor of immunology and microbiology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, said Scandinavian public health studies are of uniquely good quality. '[This excellence is] partly because they have, for a long time, had such a unified health system,' said Kedl, who wasn't involved with the new study. 'Everyone is tracked for life from birth and you can go back for many years and ask, 'Can we find a link between something that happened in the past and in the future?'' Hviid said the catalyst for the Danish study was a widely criticized Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-funded study, published in 2022, that suggested a link between aluminum in childhood vaccines and increased asthma risk. The study, however, didn't distinguish between aluminum from vaccines and aluminum from other sources. It also contained inconsistencies: for example, in one group the researchers analyzed, more aluminum exposure wasn't linked to increased asthma risk, contrary to the study's conclusions. 'If you are looking at people who got vaccines that contained aluminum versus those who had fewer, you have to control for confounding factors, you need to know that the only different source of aluminum these people received was from those vaccines,' said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center and physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. The CDC study was not able to do that, Offit said. Aluminum is the third-most abundant metal on Earth and people are exposed to the metal through breast milk, air and water, he said. 'Aluminum is part of our daily diet and has been since the beginning of time. That is the point people don't understand,' said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. Neither Osterholm nor Offit were involved with the new study. CDC officials said at the time that it appears that aluminum-containing vaccines 'do not account for the overall trends that we see.' Osterholm said the strength of the broader research is that it piles on dozens of studies that have drawn the same conclusion as the new study. 'One study does not make for a safe vaccine supply or not,' he said. 'It's the accumulative data that comes from many studies that have been done, that together demonstrate the safety of vaccines.' Why is aluminum in vaccines? Different ingredients are added to vaccines for different reasons. Aluminum — added to vaccines as aluminum salts — is what's known as an adjuvant. These additives act as a beacon for the immune system, pointing out invaders and prompting the body to produce antibodies against an antigen, or the virus or bacteria a vaccine aims to protect against. 'You can't just have an antigen and have an immune response, you need some kind of stimulus to trigger that response,' said Kedl, of the University of Colorado. 'An adjuvant is a substance that alerts the body's immune response to the vaccine's antigen. Without adjuvants, you actually create tolerance, which is the opposite effect of what you want a vaccine to do.' In the U.S., aluminum salts are used in the vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTaP) as well as vaccines for pneumonia, HPV and hepatitis B. 'The aluminum that is in vaccines is in the form of extremely small amounts of aluminum salts which is not the same as elemental aluminum which is a metal,' Hviid said. 'It's really important for parents to understand that we are not injecting metal into children.' Aluminum salts from vaccines are injected into the muscle and most are cleared away by the body and filtered out through the kidneys within two weeks, though small amounts can linger for years. 'The aluminum-containing vaccines form the backbone of our childhood immunization programs,' Hviid said, adding that there are currently no viable replacements. 'It is critically important that we keep politics and science apart in this issue. If not, it is the children, including U.S. children, who are going to suffer the consequences.'
