The Health and Human Services Department announced a sweeping plan to cut 10,000 jobs and consolidate control over its sub-agencies on Thursday. FDA drug, medical device, or food reviewers and inspectors will not be among those fired, according to聽. Instead, the cuts will target employees working on policy, human resources, information technology, procurement, and communications. The administration will start sending notices to employees on Friday, with the terminations coming into effect on May 27.
Around 3,500 employees are on the chopping block at the Food and Drug Administration, though they don’t yet know who they are.
The cuts come as Elon Musk and DOGE continue to trim the federal workforce and also represent HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s goal to exert more control over the sub-agencies contained within the department.
Kennedy has framed the cuts as a way to unite all the agencies around his efforts to “make America healthy again.”
This is not the administration鈥檚 first attempt to shrink HHS. In February, Musk laid off聽. After pushback from the device industry, the administration some FDA reviewers a week later. A federal judge has since paused all the probationary layoffs.