Last week, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary and noted anti-vaccine crackpot Robert Kennedy Jr. announced sweeping layoffs as part of a major restructuring effort.
Roughly 20,000 of the department's 82,000 full-time employees ended up on the chopping block. Around 10,000 have been laid off, with the rest being taking either early retirements or buyouts, according to the announcement.
But it's looking like Kennedy moved too hastily, firing important workers who even he admits were actually needed.
"Personnel that should not have been cut were cut," he told reporters this week, as quoted by CBS News. "We're reinstating them."
Bafflingly, he defended the unprofessional screwup.
"And that was always the plan," Kennedy added. "Part of the DOGE, we talked about this from the beginning, is we're going to do 80 percent cuts, but 20 percent of those are going to have to be reinstated, because we'll make mistakes."
It's a confounding admission, highlighting the second Trump administration's "move fast and break things" approach, and how little thought is being put into sweeping cuts affecting the HHS and a vast number of other government agencies.
DOGE has already had to reinstate key government employees on several occasions, including staff who were working to contain bird flu and USAID efforts to prevent Ebola outbreaks.
Kennedy, a noted figure in the anti-vaccine movement, has proven a highly controversial pick for the job, and is already pouring resources into investigating long-debunked claims linking vaccines and autism.
It's a precarious situation, especially given the ongoing measles outbreak. As the New York Times reported late last month, ill-informed measles patients were experiencing complications after following Kennedy's advice to take large amounts of Vitamin A.
As part of the HHS restructuring efforts, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's complete Lead Poisoning Prevention and Surveillance Branch was laid off, according to CBS — which, Kennedy argued, was a mistake.
Despite backtracking on DOGE's ill-devised plans, it remains unclear how or when the HHS will reinstate these key figures. CDC officials told CBS that they hadn't been informed of any upcoming plans to do so.
And the effects of the mass layoffs are already being felt. The CDC, for instance, won't be able to continue its investigation into lead in water "due to the loss of subject matter experts," officials said, as quoted by CBS.
Despite admitting that 20 percent of the cuts were a mistake, Kennedy has said that restructuring the HHS could save taxpayers $1.8 billion a year "without impacting critical services."
Now that the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration have been hit hard, we'll all find out whether that'll turn out to be true.
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