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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced sweeping layoffs at the Health and Human Services Department.
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HHS will fire roughly 10,000 workers, the announcement said.
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Kennedy is also creating a new agency that will streamline his MAHA initiative.
The Health and Human Services Department will lay off roughly 10,000 federal workers, part of a major reorganization led by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The announcement marks one of the largest mass firings since President Donald Trump took office and tasked each Cabinet department to work with the White House DOGE office and its de facto leader, Elon Musk. The HHS announcement includes “doge” in its URL.
The HHS said the firings would save taxpayers $1.8 billion a year. With previous reductions and early retirements, HHS will have slashed nearly 20,000 workers. In a video announcing the move, Kennedy said HHS had grown too large while not going enough to improve the nation’s health outcomes.
“HHS is a sprawling bureaucracy that encompasses literally hundreds of departments, committees, and other offices,” Kennedy said in a video posted on X. “You know how bureaucracies work — every time a new issue arises, they tack on another committee. This leads to tremendous waste and duplication, and worst of all, a loss of any unified sense of mission.”
Kennedy said the agency is creating an Administration for a Healthy America that would combine multiple agencies, including the Health Resources and Services Administration and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, into one entity.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s mission would be refocused on preventing epidemics, he said.
Kennedy’s announcement came shortly after Senate lawmakers confirmed Marty Makary as FDA commissioner and Jay Bhattacharya as the director of the National Institutes of Health.
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