Senator Baldwin Calls Out Firing Essential Health Care Workers, Experts Preventing Disease Spread

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) released the following statement about alarming reports that President Donald Trump and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. are executing mass layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), including scientists, nurses, pharmacists, and experts tracking disease spread. 

“I am all for making our government more efficient, but firing nurses and pharmacists who keep families healthy, disease experts who protect us from the next pandemic, and scientists finding cures for cancer is not what Americans signed up for. This will make Americans less healthy and safe—not more,” said Senator Baldwin. “To the public health experts, scientists, physicians, and researchers, from those early in their careers to those who have dedicated their lives to helping keep others healthy, know that I am here fighting for you and the lifesaving work you do.” 

The layoffs include the entire first-year class of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Epidemic Intelligence Service, a 73-year-old program which specializes in training disease detectives to investigate public health threats. The layoffs also include more than 1,500 research scientists, nurses, pharmacists, ethics specialists, police officers, data scientists, budget analysts, and patient care technicians at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), including critical patient care specialists at the NIH Clinical Center. The NIH Clinical Center is the nation’s largest hospital devoted entirely to clinical research, treating about 10,000 patients with rare and severe diseases every year. Mass firings of Clinical Center staff threaten patient safety and may shut down ongoing clinical trials, cutting off access to treatments and cures for patients who have nowhere else to go.

Secretary Kennedy has indicated he intends to make further changes that will reject science in favor of injecting politics deep into our health agencies and undermine everything from public health to biomedical research to substance use treatment policies.  The reported staffing cuts at the National Institutes of Health also come after the Trump Administration’s illegal attempt to cap indirect costs for biomedical research and an apparent pause in federal grants for researchers across the country, jeopardizing lifesaving breakthroughs.

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