HHS Directed to Fire More Employees, Submit Agency Reorganization Plans
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, and other federal agencies have been instructed to implement more mass firings, a memo from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) lays out. This goes beyond the firing of probationary workers, which many considered illegal firings.
As has become common, the firings, or reductions in force has Trump administration characterizes them, will be met with swift legal pushback. OMB and OPM justified the course of action by saying the American public voted for ending the “corrupt federal bureaucracy” when electing President Donald Trump in November.
They said tax dollars are being spent on spurious program from “radical interest groups,” and agencies must develop Agency Reorganization Plans, in collaboration with Department of Government Efficiency team leads, by March 13 with initial cuts.
USDA Details New Plan to Tackle Bird Flu and Lower Egg Prices
In a new op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Brooke Rollins outlined a new strategy she says will mitigate the spread of bird flu and lower the price of eggs — a signature issue of the 2024 election. Rollins says the USDA will invest $1 billion in the new plan, which will be paid for, at least in part, by Department of Government Efficiency cuts.
According to Rollins’ op-ed:
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- USDA will spend $500 million to help enhance biosecurity measures to help keep the virus off farms. This can include restricting access to farms, increasing sanitation and improved hygiene. Rollins said USDA will expand a pilot program started under the Biden administration which sends USDA inspectors to assess biosecurity measures on farms.
- The U.S. government will spend $400 million to reimburse farmers with affected flocks. The U.S. already compensates farmers for the loss of their chickens. In December, USDA added a requirement that poultry producers pass a biosecurity audit before they could be compensated.
- USDA, which regulates vaccines for animals, is exploring the use of vaccines and therapeutics but it hasn’t authorized use of any yet.
- The U.S. will cut back on regulations on egg producers and “make it easier for families to raise backyard chickens.”
- The U.S. government will consider temporary imports of eggs to reduce prices
Importantly, the agency stopped short of authorizing the use of a bird flu vaccine for poultry in the United States. U.S. poultry producers have strongly resisted vaccinating their flocks because America is a leading exporter, and many countries won’t accept birds that have been vaccinated.
CDC Disease Detectives ‘Remain in Their Positions,’ Agency Says
The Trump administration terminated roughly 1,300 positions in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Although EIS officers were reportedly included among the cuts, the agency said none have lost their jobs. Despite recent reports, officers in the CDC’s famed Epidemic Intelligence Service — often referred to as “disease detectives” — have not been fired and continue to investigate outbreaks and public health concerns, according to the agency.
“To date, all of the officers in CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) remain in their positions,” the CDC told Healio in a statement. The statement followed reports that the number of EIS officers had been at least halved as part of the efforts by President Donald J. Trump and Elon Musk to reduce government spending. The EIS was established by the CDC in 1951 to train disease detectives to investigate public health threats in the United States and globally.
EIS officers helped launch smallpox eradication efforts in the 1960s, discovered the cause of Legionnaire’s disease in the 1970s, published the first report of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, investigated West Nile virus in the 1990s and the anthrax attacks in the 2000s, and responded to outbreaks of Ebola and Zika virus in the 2010s. More than 100 EIS officers deployed to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Federal Technology Staffers Resign Rather Than Help Musk and DOGE
The Associated Press reported:
More than 20 civil service employees resigned Tuesday from billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, saying they were refusing to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services.”
“We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” the 21 staffers wrote in a joint resignation letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”
The employees also warned that many of those enlisted by Musk to help him slash the size of the federal government under President Donald Trump’s administration were political ideologues who did not have the necessary skills or experience for the task ahead of them.
The mass resignation of engineers, data scientists, designers and product managers is a temporary setback for Musk and the Republican president’s tech-driven purge of the federal workforce. It comes amid a flurry of court challenges that have sought to stall, stop or unwind their efforts to fire or coerce thousands of government workers out of jobs.
Fired Cybersecurity Chief for Veterans Affairs Site Warns That Health and Financial Data Is at Risk
The Associated Press reported:
Sensitive financial and health data belonging to millions of veterans and stored on a benefits website is at risk of being stolen or otherwise compromised, according to a federal employee tasked with cybersecurity who was recently fired as part of massive government-wide cuts.
The warning comes from Jonathan Kamens, who led cybersecurity efforts for VA.gov — an online portal for Department of Veterans Affairs benefits and services used by veterans, their caregivers and families. Kamens was fired Feb. 14 and said he doesn’t believe his role will be filled, leaving the site particularly vulnerable.
“Given how the government has been functioning for the last month, I don’t think the people at VA … are going to be able to replace me,” Kamens told The Associated Press Monday evening. “I think they’re going to be lacking essential oversight over cybersecurity processes for VA.gov.”
Trump Administration Rehires Some FDA Employees It Fired
The Trump administration has started quietly rehiring some of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) employees it fired last week, according to nine agency sources, shortly after letting them go in a process that insiders described as abrupt and haphazard.
The total number of employees rehired is unclear, but in at least some cases the reinstatements appeared to be broad. All 12 of the people who worked in the office reviewing surgical and infection control devices were reinstated, an agency source said.
Two of three people in the FDA’s digital health office who had been let go were rehired, as were a handful of employees reviewing AI-enabled imaging devices, diabetes devices and cardiovascular devices, according to four other agency sources.
How Trump’s USAID Freeze Halted the Effort to Develop an Effective HIV Vaccine in Africa
Last month, researchers in South Africa were preparing to administer two experimental HIV vaccines in a Phase 1 clinical trial. The staff was trained, immunizations were ready, and participant screening had begun. Then, they received a stop-work order: The $45 million in funding from USAID to support the project was frozen under a 90-day review — and could be withdrawn completely.
The trial was designed to test novel immunogens identified in Africa to see if they could produce broadly neutralizing antibodies, a major goal of HIV vaccine research. The idea is that people infected with HIV who develop exceptionally strong antibodies, sometimes called “elite neutralizers,” could provide a blueprint for vaccine design.
Researchers analyze a patient’s blood at the time of infection, and if they produce a potent immune response, scientists can then design a vaccine that spurs the production of similar antibodies.
The vaccines in the planned trial originated from two individuals with breakthrough infections, found in East and South Africa. In different arms of the study, participants were to receive both vaccines, in hopes of producing two lineages of broadly neutralizing antibodies to protect against different subtypes of HIV. The trial was set to enroll 48 participants across four sites — one in Uganda, one in Kenya, and two in South Africa.
