The Trump administration is making sweeping cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services that Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. argues will streamline the federal health infrastructure. But cutting so many programs and personnel at once could end up making America less healthy, lawmakers and state health agencies warn.
“Robert Kennedy is a hazard to our health,” Sen. Raphael Warnock told NOTUS.
As Kennedy embarks on a significant and sprawling reorganization of the country’s federal public health infrastructure, state and local officials told NOTUS they’re already worried about the consequences of the cuts he’s already made.
HHS officials cut billions of dollars in grants to state and local health agencies beginning this week as part of DOGE’s cost-cutting efforts, saying they were rescinding unspent COVID-era funding. But the terminations went far beyond the pandemic, NOTUS found. Money for substance abuse prevention, pandemic prevention research and mental health support are among the funds being cut.
In an emailed statement to NOTUS, an HHS spokesperson, Emily Hilliard, said the funding cuts were necessary to allow the department to focus on other, more pressing issues.
“The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago,” Hilliard wrote. “HHS is prioritizing funding projects that will deliver on President Trump’s mandate to address our chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.”
Hilliard added that the cuts would save the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention $11.4 billion beginning 30 days after the cuts began, and termination notice issuing began on March 24.
State health agencies are already scrambling to cope with the effects of the cuts.
“This funding supports the public health work and data systems improved during the pandemic that helped California fill gaps in its existing public health infrastructure,” said Erica Pan, director of the California Department of Public Health, in an email to NOTUS. The state is working to evaluate the cuts’ effects, Pan added.
The Nevada Division of Public and Behavioral Health lost 25 employees as a result of initial cuts, a spokesperson for the department, Jesse Stone, said in an email to NOTUS. Nineteen of those employees were supporting the Nevada State Immunization Program and the Office of State Epidemiology via the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Foundation.
And South Carolina lost federal funding for four projects, including a COVID surveillance program and a program targeting vaccines for children, a spokesperson said in an email.
“This funding has been essential in supporting critical public health systems, including disease monitoring, reporting, and vaccine efforts for COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses,” a spokesperson for the Washington State Department of Health, Marisol Mata Somarribas, said in an email to NOTUS.
Cuts to the agency, its programs and the research it funds across the country have been sweeping in scope. Kennedy is overseeing the departure of over 20,000 workers — half voluntarily and half via layoffs. The reorganization would also cut the number of divisions at HHS from 28 to 15, and centralize a number of capabilities that are currently dealt with by individual agencies, including human resources, external affairs and policy. It would also create a new Administration for a Healthy America that would consolidate programs that support Kennedy’s mission of reducing chronic diseases.
HHS did not respond to a request for comment.
Beyond the cuts to state health agency funds, HHS has cut millions of dollars in funding for research into Alzheimer’s disease, cancer and HIV. Several state health departments, including those of Alabama, Mississippi, Kansas and Virginia, said in emails to NOTUS that they were still evaluating how the cuts would impact them.
DOGE has also fired National Institutes of Health staff who work to stop lab leaks and others who just aren’t at their desks. “The entire federal workforce is downsizing now, so this will be a painful period for HHS as we downsize from 82,000 to around 62,000,” Kennedy said in a video posted to social media Thursday.
Democrats in Congress are incensed by the firings at HHS.
“At the end of the day, we’re not any safer because of this,” Sen. Ruben Gallego said. “We’re getting rid of some very important staff positions that are key to our public health safety net.”
But the Republican lawmakers NOTUS spoke with voiced no such concern.
“I’m supportive of what RFK Jr. is doing,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis said. “It’s obvious to me that the agency needed restructuring.”
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, one of a handful of Republican lawmakers who met with Kennedy on Thursday morning, told NOTUS she too supported the reorganization.
“I think if we’re going to deliver a service as critical as health, we need to make sure that the dollars are getting to the person rather than blocked up into the bureaucracy,” Capito said.
“It’s tough to cut that many positions, but I think he assured us this morning that this will not result in, I mean, the goal is to maintain the good services, the good service and customer service and all that HHS provides,” she said.
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Mark Alfred and Margaret Manto are NOTUS reporters and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellows.