The Department of Health and Human Services is laying off thousands of employees, in some cases eliminating entire offices and programs.

HHS began sending reduction-in-force (RIF) notices around 5 a.m. Eastern Tuesday morning, according to more than half a dozen employees who spoke to Federal News Network.

Several HHS employees shared photos of staff waiting in long lines to get into their buildings. Employees targeted by the RIF learned their Personal Identity Verification (PIV) cards were deactivated.

“The way people are finding out whether they are RIF’d this morning is to go through this very long process to get to the building and to go through security, and then badge-in at the main atrium. If their badge doesn’t work, they are corralled in front of everyone to wait for an escort to their office to pick up their things. It is so humiliating and degrading in the face of something so terrible,” an employee said.

A Food and Drug Administration employee said the department added security measures, including wanding employees before entering the building.

HHS said last week it was planning to eliminate 10,000 jobs through nonvoluntary layoffs. The department is also looking to cut another 10,000 employees through early retirement and buyout offers. Overall, the agency is looking to reduce its workforce to 62,000 employees.

“There are various divisions being completely RIF’d,” an HHS employee told Federal News Network. “The initial ‘Fork in the Road’ email promised that folks who would be let go ‘down the road’ would be treated with the ‘utmost respect and dignity.’ And what’s happening today is the exact opposite.”

The National Treasury Employees Union told bargaining unit members in an email last week that the RIFs would primarily impact support positions — including human resources, IT, procurement and finance.

However, an FDA employee said science and policy-related roles are also being eliminated.

“Because entire offices of support staff have been let go, we’re immediately running into problems. In my office, one of our labs has shut down today, because we’ve run out of supplies due to the halt on procurement. The people that could help the supply issue have been let go,” the FDA employee said.

‘There is no more staff in EEO’

RIF notices sent to FDA employees listed LaKeisha McClendon, the agency’s Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) director, as their point of contact, if they wished to file an employment discrimination complaint. But McClendon left the FDA several weeks ago and now works as the administrator for the Office of Human Rights and Equity Administrator for Howard County, Maryland.

“There is no more staff in EEO, so there is no one to appeal to at the Food and Drug Administration,” a second FDA employee said.

In the absence of EEO staff, all FDA employees will now need to take their claims to the acting FDA commissioner, who is the next in the line of delegated authority.

Employees at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services who received RIF notices were directed to send their EEO complaints to Anita Pinder, the agency’s director of the Office of Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights. But Pinder died in November 2024.

“It’s more traumatizing for that staff, referencing their dead EEO director,” said an employee who attended Pinder’s funeral.

‘We followed the science. We told the truth’

Brian King, the director of the Center for Tobacco Products, told staff in an email that he had been placed on administrative leave after serving in the position for nearly three years.

“Together, we have moved mountains,” King wrote, telling staff that their office drove adult smoking rates down to 75-year lows and youth tobacco product use rates to 25-year lows, including a 70% decline in youth e-cigarette use over the past five years.

“As the center embarks on its next chapter, which will undoubtedly be met by uncertainty and challenges, I encourage you to hold your heads high and never compromise the guiding tenets that CTP has held dear since its inception. We obeyed the law. We followed the science. We told the truth,” King wrote.

The Office of Science Director Matthew Farrelly and Deputy Director Todd Cecil were also reassigned and put on administrative leave, according to another email obtained by Federal News Network.

Another HHS employee who received a RIF notice said all staff with the Office of Science and Data Policy and the Office of Policy and Program Support received RIF notices.

“All staff, regardless of role, seniority, tenure or performance were RIF’d. This was devastating because DOGE promised our career officials ASPE would escape the RIF if we got to 10% of our 2019 staffing levels through VERA, VSIP, firing the probationary people, etc. ASPE surpassed that target,” an HHS employee said.

Other offices within the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) — the Office of Human Services Policy (HSP), the Office of Health Policy and the Office of Behavioral Health, Disability, and Aging Policy — went through a partial RIF.

‘Cutting the most productive employees’

The department also eliminated hundreds of positions from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), an office that HHS didn’t mention in its announcement last week.

“HRSA oversees a budget about the size of CDC and runs important safety net programs like funding for community health centers, the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program, the nation’s organ donation and transplant system, the National Health Service Corps (that gets health care into rural and urban areas), and Maternal and Child Health,” a former HRSA employee told Federal News Network.

Staff at the Center for Devices and Radiological Health, which oversees the safety of certain medical devices, also received RIF notices.

“They got notices telling us, due to the nature of our work, we are to work remotely until the transition plan is established,” an HHS employee said. “Folks are getting two emails — one about being RIF’d and another telling them to wait for further guidance.”

An HHS employee who took the department’s Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA) and Voluntary Separation Incentive Payment (VSIP) offer said the workforce cuts are having an impact on morale.

“The actions I’ve seen in the past few months are to take everything we know about how to develop a motivated, productive workforce and do completely the opposite,” the employee said. “The administration [through DOGE] is cutting the most productive employees and is doing so in a manner that makes the rest question whether they should stay or not. The federal government still has responsibilities [outlined in law] that it will fail to execute with the workforce culture currently being created.”

‘Are we going to lose the momentum that we have?’

Keith Van Houten, whose son was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy when he was eight years old, said his family depends on HHS research to accelerate the development of new treatments. Van Houten told Federal News Network that his family and others in the rare disease community are “heartbroken” over the HHS cuts.

“When he was diagnosed, there wasn’t a single FDA-approved drug for his condition. There was a lot of research happening for the last 25 years at NIH, out in academia. And today, we have seven FDA-approved drugs on the market for muscular dystrophy, thanks to that research and some incentive programs at the FDA. We’re really fearful about what’s going to happen. Are we going to lose the momentum that we have?” Van Houten said.

Van Houten said NIH has pioneered research in genetically targeted drugs, a treatment that large pharmaceutical companies are unlikely to research.

Muscular dystrophy is one of the most common fatal genetic diseases diagnosed during childhood and affects about one out of every 5,000 individuals worldwide.

“NIH is doing a lot of the core research, the real foundational stuff that you need to be done, in the long term, to bring a new treatment to market. But there’s not always a financial incentive for pharma to do it, because it’s so far in the future. The payback is so long, it’s risky,” Van Houten said. “All of our hopes are dependent on new drug development. We need the research at NIH and we need the approval to happen through the FDA process as well.”

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