Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is backtracking on his sweeping federal layoffs, revealing Thursday that he would be reinstating some programs and positions that had been mistakenly cut.
The Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary announced last week that he would be slashing 10,000 federal jobs in an effort to reorganize the health department, and by Monday, the layoffs were already in full swing.
But in the process to “Make America Healthy Again,” Kennedy admitted that a few too many cuts were made along the way, though he says that “was always the plan.”
ADVERTISEMENT
“We’re streamlining the agencies. We’re going to make it work for public health, make it work for the American people,” Kennedy said. “In the course of that, there were a number of instances where studies that should have not have been cut were cut, and we’ve reinstated them.”
“Personnel that should not have been cut were cut–we’re reinstating them, and that was always the plan.”
He added that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had mistakenly cut some programs and jobs that were not meant to be eliminated, particularly human resources jobs.
But once again, Kennedy said it was always part of the “plan” to go back in and fix DOGE’s mistakes.
“Part of the DOGE—we talked about this from the beginning—is we’re going to do 80% cuts, but 20% of those are going to have to be reinstalled, because we’ll make mistakes,” he said.
Now, he says he will reinstate various programs across HHS, including a program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that monitored blood lead levels for children.
“There were some programs that were cut that are being reinstated, and I believe that that’s one,” Kennedy said about the program.
This came as a shock to Erik Svendson, the director of the division that used to oversee the CDC’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention branch, who told ABC News that all work had come to an abrupt halt with no news of when the program would be reinstated, if at all.
HHS announced in a statement last week its plan to down-size from 82,000 to 62,000 full-time employees “without impacting critical services.” The additional 10,000 cuts came from employees who had already opted to quit or voluntarily resign after President Donald Trump took office.
The subsequent layoffs kicked off at the start of the week, and by Tuesday, entire divisions of the Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health, and CDC had been cut.
Freedom of Information Act requests, reproductive health and worker safety groups, as well as HIV, violence, and injury prevention groups were some of the programs swept up in these layoffs.
On Tuesday, Kennedy stated how “our hearts go out to those who have lost their jobs. But the reality is clear: what we’ve been doing isn’t working.”
“This overhaul is about realigning HHS with its core mission: to stop the chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again,” he said. “It’s a win-win for taxpayers, and for every American we serve.”
