Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Kennedy's Comments Alarm FDA Employees During Friday's Visit
Politico: RFK Jr. Says Deep State ‘Is Real,’ Called FDA Employees ‘Sock Puppet’ Of Industry
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s visit to the FDA Friday was supposed to introduce him as a trusted leader to agency employees. It did anything but. Over the course of 40 minutes, Kennedy, in largely off-the-cuff remarks, asserted that the “Deep State” is real, referenced past CIA experiments on human mind control and accused the employees he was speaking to of becoming a “sock puppet” of the industries they regulate. (Cancryn, Gardner and Lim, 4/11)
CBS News: FDA To Replace Laid-Off Employees With Contractors, Sources Say
The Food and Drug Administration is finalizing plans to replace some of the employees it laid off with contractors, three FDA officials tell CBS News, after steep cuts to the agency's workforce disrupted drug and food safety inspections. "Recent adjustments in staff numbers have created a heightened need for the FDA to be nimble, efficient and respond creatively, in order to continue and maintain FDA's regulatory inspection presence and the gold standard of excellence," agency officials wrote, in emails and draft contracting documents obtained by CBS News. (Tin, 4/11)
On USAID —
The Washington Post: Official Who Oversaw Dismantling Of USAID Leaves State Department
Pete Marocco, a State Department official who oversaw the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), has left the agency after less than three months, according to a senior Trump administration official. The official, who like others in this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters, confirmed to The Washington Post on Monday that Marocco had stepped down. The reason for his departure, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, was not immediately clear. (Hudson and Jeong, 4/14)
Bloomberg: Trump’s Foreign Aid Cuts Are Killing Jobs For US Contractors Too
Weeks after Donald Trump won reelection, Keith Ives held an all-staff meeting at his Denver-based company to reassure his 30 employees that their work evaluating the success of US aid projects overseas wasn’t under threat. “I enthusiastically told them, ‘I’m not worried at all — the work we do isn’t political,’” said Ives, who founded Causal Design more than a decade ago. “We weren’t working in climate. We’re not working in gender. We’re not doing DEI work. We’re monitoring and evaluating emergency food aid.” (Marlow, 4/12)
More on the restructuring of HHS —
Stat: Key NIH Grant Review Panels Resume Meeting, But Are Not 'Back To Normal'
After being indefinitely suspended in the first days of the Trump administration, key National Institutes of Health committees that approve research grants resumed meeting this week. It appears to be a positive step toward restoring the flow of billions of dollars in biomedical research funding to universities and medical schools that for months has been significantly staunched. (Molteni, 4/11)
Politico: The Downside Of RIFs At NIH
The National Institutes of Health mistakenly fired — and then rehired — one of its most distinguished scientists amid a slapdash effort to shrink the agency’s workforce. NIH employees were shocked last week when Richard Youle emailed them to say he’d been among those caught up in the reduction in force, according to three people with knowledge of the dismissal who requested anonymity to discuss the situation. They had believed the NIH’s 1,200-person downsizing plan meant consolidating communications, human resources and procurement functions — not axing scientists. (Schumaker, Paun and Reader, 4/11)
The Hill: HHS Officials Lack Clarity On Agency Layoffs, House Aide Says
Department of Health and Human Services officials during a closed-door briefing could not give a full accounting of the number of people who have been fired from the agency, a Democratic aide for the House Energy and Commerce Committee said Friday. HHS officials insisted to committee staff that the agency’s massive staffing cuts had been performed “with a scalpel” and “with nuance” but they did not have any numbers of who had been laid off, the aide told reporters. “There did not seem to be a function level understanding of who had been terminated,” they added. (Weixel, 4/12)
Stat: Why CDC Cuts Are Being Called 'The Greatest Gift To Tobacco Industry In The Last Half-Century'
Amid the 10,000 job cuts so far this month at the U.S. health department, what happened to OSH is “the greatest gift to the tobacco industry in the last half century,” said Tim McAfee, who headed the division from 2010 to 2017. (Todd, 4/14)
Stat: Closure Of CDC Hepatitis Lab Imperils U.S. Outbreak Response, Prevention
An estimated 4 million Americans are infected with hepatitis C, a disease that can go undetected for years. Another 2.4 million people in this country are chronically infected with hepatitis B, which is the leading cause of liver cancer globally. (Branswell, 4/14)
NBC News: One Of The Country's Leading Alzheimer's Projects Is In Jeopardy
Andrea Gilbert thought she knew what would happen to her brain. The 79-year-old retired attorney, who has Alzheimer’s disease and receives care at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, agreed to donate it for research in 2023. She hoped to help scientists unlock the keys to a disease that had left her writing notes to remind herself if she’d already brushed her teeth. The fate of that program is now in limbo because the Trump administration has upended the system that funds biomedical research. (Bush, 4/13)
Stat: Tech Modernization At Community Health Centers In Limbo After Federal Workforce Cuts
The future of a technology modernization program, meant to help the government understand if the billions of tax dollars it spends on community health centers are in fact making Americans healthy, now looks uncertain. (Trang, 4/14)
KFF Health News: KFF Health News’ ‘On Air’: Journalists Delve Into Effects Of Deep Federal Cuts On Public Health
KFF Health News chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner and national public health correspondent Amy Maxmen discussed the impact of federal cuts on public health on Connecticut Public Radio’s “The Wheelhouse” on April 9.Click here to hear Rovner and Maxmen on “The Wheelhouse” (4/12)
