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USDA Accidentally Fired Officials Working On Bird Flu and Is Now Trying to Rehire Them
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said Tuesday that, over the weekend, it accidentally fired “several” agency employees who are working on the federal government’s response to the H5N1 avian flu outbreak.
The agency said it is now trying to quickly reverse the firings. “Although several positions supporting [bird flu efforts] were notified of their terminations over the weekend, we are working to swiftly rectify the situation and rescind those letters,” a USDA spokesperson said in a statement.
“USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service frontline positions are considered public safety positions, and we are continuing to hire the workforce necessary to ensure the safety and adequate supply of food to fulfill our statutory mission.”
Trump Admin Lays Out Who Exactly Was Cut at HHS in Face of ‘Democrat Hysteria’
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) still employs more people than it did in 2019, despite “Democrat hysteria” over recent cuts within the department’s agencies, Fox News Digital exclusively learned.
A senior Trump administration official told Fox News Digital that there have been 6,000 departures from HHS since Jan. 20, Inauguration Day. The agency, however, still employs nearly 6,000 more people than it did in 2019, including more than 2,000 employees at the Food and Drug Administration relative to 2019 numbers, and 1,200 employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Hiring at HHS ballooned between fiscal year 2019 and 2024, the senior Trump administration official said, with 17% more full-time employees by 2024. 50% of overall jobs in the U.S. that were created in 2024 were indirect or direct government jobs, the official added.
DOGE Reportedly Cuts FDA Employees Investigating Neuralink
The purging of federal employees carried out by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) somehow just keeps cutting staffers involved in investigating Elon Musk’s companies. According to a report from Reuters, several employees at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) who were tasked with managing reviews and applications related to Musk’s Neuralink received pink slips over the weekend.
Per Reuters, 20 people who worked in the FDA’s office of neurological and physical medicine devices got axed as part of a broader effort being carried out by DOGE to cut down the federal workforce. Several of those employees worked directly on Neuralink, Musk’s company that produces brain-computer interfaces designed to be implanted in a human brain, and were tasked with reviewing clinical trial applications.
While the sources Reuters spoke to said they did not think those employees were specifically targeted, the reduction of workers within the medical devices office isn’t going to make things any easier for companies like Neuralink, which likely wants to see the approval process speed up. Fewer people to approve applications either means that the process slows down even more or corners get cut. Take a guess at which of those options Musk likely prefers.
The COVID ‘Contrarians’ Are in Power. We Still Haven’t Hashed Out Whether They Were Right.
In October, Stanford University professor Jay Bhattacharya hosted a conference on the lessons of COVID-19 in order “to do better in the next pandemic.” He invited scholars, journalists, and policy wonks who, like him, have criticized the U.S. management of the crisis as overly draconian.
Bhattacharya also invited public health authorities who had considered his alternative approach reckless. None of them showed up.
Now, the “contrarians” are seizing the reins: President Donald Trump has nominated Bhattacharya to lead the National Institutes of Health and Johns Hopkins University surgeon Marty Makary to run the Food and Drug Administration.
Yet the polarized disagreements about what worked and what didn’t in the fight against the biggest public health disaster in modern times have yet to be aired in a nonpartisan setting — and it seems unlikely they ever will be.
Struggle Over Americans’ Personal Data Plays Out Across the Government
Last week, Michelle King, the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA), sought to reassure Democrats on Capitol Hill about the presence of two of Elon Musk’s allies at her agency. The SSA keeps medical information, bank account numbers and other sensitive personal data about the roughly 70 million Americans it provides with more than $1 trillion in benefits annually.
In the Feb. 11 letter to Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, Ms. King said that the two representatives, from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, had not yet seen personal information — and said any disclosures would follow established procedures.
“I share your commitment to protecting sensitive personal and financial information from improper disclosure and misuse,” she wrote in the letter, which was viewed by The New York Times. “We follow all relevant laws and regulations when granting access to S.S.A. systems.”
N.I.H. Research Grants Lag $1 Billion Behind Last Year’s
Senators have been raising concerns that grant allocations are lagging behind last year’s at this time by about $1 billion. Federal research funding to tackle areas like cancer, diabetes and heart disease is lagging by about $1 billion behind the levels of recent years, reflecting the chaotic start of the Trump administration and the dictates that froze an array of grants, meetings and communications.
The slowdown in awards from the National Institutes of Health has been occurring while a legal challenge plays out over the administration’s sudden policy change last week to slash payments for administrative and facilities costs related to medical research.
A federal judge in Massachusetts has temporarily blocked the cutbacks, pending hearings later this month. Federally funded research has driven major advances in cutting-edge gene therapies and immune-system-boosting treatments for certain cancers, cystic fibrosis and sickle cell disease.
