RFK JR says that 20% of the job cuts from the DOGE Health Agency were errors | Trump administration

About a fifth of the 10,000 cut jobs from the United States Ministry of Health and Social Services (HHS) were made by mistake and must be corrected, admitted the United States Secretary of Health, Robert F Kennedy Jr.

The mass layoffs of the health service began this week in the midst of the Donald Trump administration to reduce the size of the federal government’s workforce. The union representatives were informed that around 10,000 people had to lose their jobs before further discounts which could see the workforce of 82,000 people from the department cut by almost a quarter.

But Kennedy, the former environmental lawyer and skeptical vaccines who became Ally Trump, said that a large section of Elon Musk dismissals “Department of Government Efficient” (DOGE) is wrong.

“The staff who should not have been cut, was cut,” Kennedy told journalists on Thursday. “We reinstall them. And it was always the plan. Part of the Doge, we talked about it from the start, is that we are going to make 80% discounts, but 20% of these will have to be reintegrated, because we will make mistakes. ”

The Secretary in the United States of Health said that some of the people who lost their jobs were not in the administrative roles that were targeted by DOGE, the reform also affecting research work.

A program of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) which monitors exposure to lead in children was among the work wrongly by layoffs, said Kennedy. “There were programs that have been reduced that are reinstated, and I think it is one,” he said.

It is still not clear which staff will be restored or what functions the health service will keep. The enormous job cuts have affected large expanses of the ministry’s work, with lost experts in fields as diverse as smoking, infertility and mine safety.

Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cuts included the division devoted to the development of tobacco policy, which was paid by the tobacco industry.

Robert Califf, a former FDA commissioner, said the layoffs were “a dark day for public health”.