Trump 'planning mass job cuts at US health agencies'

The Trump administration is preparing a new executive order that would seek thousands of layoffs at federal health agencies, including the FDA, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Citing people familiar with the matter, the news service reports that an order could be issued as early as next week mandating that agencies shed a certain percentage of their workforce.

The White House has, however, denied that an executive order relating to agencies that come under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is forthcoming, says the WSJ.

Officials at federal agencies have already been asked to prepare lists of employees who are essential for operations – as well as those who are not. That is focusing on probationary employees – i.e., those who recently took up employment – for whom it would be easier to terminate their jobs.

HHS currently has a headcount of more than 80,000 people across the FDA, CDC, NIH, and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), among other agencies.

It's likely no coincidence that the WSJ article – and another report in The Washington Post, which suggests up to 40% of probationary staff could be deemed "non-mission-critical" – comes as the deadline was met for a voluntary resignation offer that expired yesterday, which would have given federal workers a guarantee of nearly eight months of pay to leave their jobs.

The reduction programme is being driven by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, who took a similar approach to reducing staff numbers when he took over Twitter (now X) in 2022.

That offer was temporarily blocked by a federal judge yesterday, after which the government extended the deadline for the programme until end-of-day next Monday, before which another hearing on the matter is scheduled to be held.

Federal employees who take up the offer can do so by simply replying to an email with the word "resign," but have been warned not to do so by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) union, which claims "President Trump may not even have the authority to make such an offer, and federal workers who resign may not get paid."

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which is responsible for making the buyout offers, has previously suggested that, if not enough workers take up the voluntary offer, forced redundancies would follow. It said yesterday that, so far, more than 60,000 people have agreed to resign, which falls short of the 5% to 10% level sought by the White House.

The downsizing of health federal agencies comes after Trump threatened to pull the US out of the World Health Organization (WHO) and shut down USAID, the world's largest donor of humanitarian aid, including projects to raise the quality and safety of medicines in low- and middle-income countries.