The Trump administration appears to have fired all but one person from the office that oversees the federal government’s family-planning initiatives, including teen pregnancy prevention programs and embryo donation efforts.
The Office of Population Affairs, frequently the target of attacks from Republicans in Congress because it distributes funding to some Planned Parenthood clinics, locked out its staff from their emails and laptops on Friday night, according to three federal workers who spoke with NOTUS.
“Almost all of the staff’s accounts have been disabled,” Jessica Marcella, who served as the deputy assistant secretary for population affairs during the Biden administration, told NOTUS.
The only person left at the Office of Population Affairs is a member of the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service whose firing would require further processing, Marcella said.
“Can one person do everything a 50-person office has done? No,” she said.
The lockout from computers and emails at OPA occurred around the same time that the Department of Health and Human Services sent out reduction-in-force notices to workers across the agency. NOTUS confirmed that those notices were sent to government email addresses — emails that the staff at OPA can no longer check, leading them to assume they have been fired but unable to verify.
In response to questions about the Office of Population Affairs RIFs, an HHS spokesperson didn’t deny that the cuts had occurred, but didn’t offer details about their scope.
“All HHS employees receiving reduction-in-force notices were designated non-essential by their respective divisions,” the spokesperson said via email.
Beyond the Office of Population Affairs, other divisions of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health were also affected by the RIFs, according to another Biden-era official. Two of its regional offices also had staff cuts, former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health Policy Adrian Shanker told NOTUS. That’s on top of the cuts to HHS staff that took place earlier this year, Shanker said.
“Ultimately, it’s about readiness to respond to public health crises as they occur,” Shanker said. “There’s fewer people to be able to be out in their communities.”
Some of the cuts to the Office of Population Affairs run counter to the policy priorities of the MAHA movement, which has amplified alternative reproductive health groups’ calls for more federal attention to fertility and family planning issues. The Trump administration has pledged to increase federal support for in vitro fertilization and to reduce costs.
The embryo program at the Office of Population Affairs houses federal efforts to help people receive frozen embryos unused during IVF treatments, which is one method of increasing the chances of conception for those who cannot produce their own embryos. It can also significantly reduce the costs of IVF.
“Fertility support is broadly covered by Title X,” which the Office of Population Affairs administers, Shanker said.
Outside policy groups echoed Shanker.
“If there’s no one who works at the Office of Population Affairs, there’s no one to administer the Title X family planning program, which is a massively important program for reproductive health and rights in this country,” said Liz McCaman Taylor, the senior federal policy counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights. “It’s the only domestic federal family planning program. It helps support thousands of service sites and millions of people.”
The Office of Population Affairs has been the target of attacks from the Trump administration for months. In March, the administration withheld Title X grant funding from 16 grantees, including the 13 direct grants given to Planned Parenthood facilities that are used to help provide birth control, screening for sexually-transmitted infections and other preventative services.
“It’s a backdoor way to get to the president’s proposed zero dollars for Title X,” Taylor said. “I’m just really hoping that it’s not as dire as it seems.”
House Republicans have proposed eliminating the office in the past. In 2023, Illinois Rep. Mary Miller offered an amendment to an HHS appropriations bill that would have ceased funding the office. It failed to pass but did receive 204 Republican votes in favor.
While distributing funding for family planning services is central to the Office of Population Affairs’ role, the office also promotes adolescent health care programs and sex education for teens, conducts reproductive health research and funds organizations that promote embryo donation and adoption.
Title X grants are administered through a five-year project period, so current projects are funded through March 31, 2026, Marcella said — but OPA staff would typically begin reviewing applications for continued funds around this time.
“It quickly puts in jeopardy the ability, process-wise, to continue the program,” Marcella said. “And maybe that’s the goal.”