"RFK Jr. Plans 10,000 Job Cuts in Major Restructuring of Health Department; Changes would reshape the nation’s health agencies and close regional offices" -- by Liz Essley Whyte and Natalie Andrews (3/27/25)
WASHINGTON—Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he would significantly cut the size of the department he leads, reshaping the nation’s health agencies and closing regional offices.
Kennedy on Thursday said the agency would ax 10,000 full-time employees spread across agencies tasked with responding to disease outbreaks, approving new drugs, providing insurance for the poorest Americans and more. The cuts are in addition to roughly 10,000 employees who chose to leave the department through voluntary separation offers since President Trump took office, according to the department.
Together, the cuts would eliminate about one-quarter of a workforce that would shrink to 62,000. The department would lose five of its 10 regional offices. HHS said essential health services wouldn’t be affected.
“We’re going to eliminate an entire alphabet soup of departments and agencies while preserving their core function,” Kennedy said in a video posted on X.
‘Long-overdue Crack in the Dam’: RFK Jr. to Create CDC Sub-agency Focused on Vaccine Injuries
Vaccine safety advocates hailed HHS Secretary Kennedy’s plan to create an agency within the CDC focused on vaccine injuries and also long COVID and Lyme disease. In an interview with Chris Cuomo, Kennedy also revealed that when he asked an HHS agency for patient data, he was told he’d have to purchase it.
4/1/25: The following article---by 'news-gathering' outlet AP, was on the upper left hand corner on Drudge. Note: that level of placement on Drudge means the Dems and the MSM will be talking about it -- with their slant -- which is fine. We're in the Golden Age of Pamphleteering -- and, we ALWAYS were... so, "read thru" their rhetoric...:
"Mass layoffs are underway at the nation’s public health agencies" -- By CARLA K. JOHNSON
Employees across the massive U.S. Health and Human Services Department received notices Tuesday that their jobs were being eliminated, part of a sweeping overhaul designed to vastly shrink the agencies responsible for protecting and promoting Americans’ health.
The cuts include researchers, scientists, doctors, support staff and senior leaders, leaving the federal government without many of the key experts who have long guided U.S. decisions on medical research, drug approvals and other issues.
“The revolution begins today!” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote on social media as he celebrated the swearing-in of his latest hires: Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the new director of the National Institutes of Health and Martin Makary, the new Food and Drug Administration commissioner. Kennedy’s post came just hours after employees began receiving emailed layoff notices. He later wrote, “Our hearts go out to those who have lost their jobs,” but said that the department needs to be “recalibrated” to emphasize disease prevention.
Kennedy announced a plan last week to remake the department, which, through its agencies, is responsible for tracking health trends and disease outbreaks, conducting and funding medical research, and monitoring the safety of food and medicine, as well as for administering health insurance programs for nearly half the country.
The plan would consolidate agencies that oversee billions of dollars for addiction services and community health centers under a new office called the Administration for a Healthy America.
HHS said layoffs are expected to save $1.8 billion annually — about 0.1% — from the department’s $1.7 trillion budget, most of which is spent on Medicare and Medicaid health insurance coverage for millions of Americans.
The layoffs are expected to shrink HHS to 62,000 positions, lopping off nearly a quarter of its staff — 10,000 jobs through layoffs and another 10,000 workers who took early retirement and voluntary separation offers. Many of the jobs are based in the Washington area, but also in Atlanta, where the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is based, and in smaller offices throughout the country.
Some staffers began getting termination notices in their work inboxes at 5 a.m., while others found out their jobs had been eliminated after standing in long lines outside offices in Washington, Maryland and Atlanta to see if their badges still worked.
Some gathered at local coffee shops and lunch spots after being turned away, finding out they had been eliminated after decades of service.
One wondered aloud if it was a cruel April Fools’ Day joke. Adding to the confusion, some layoff notices included instructions to file equal employment complaints to a person who had died in November.
At the NIH, cuts included at least four directors of the NIH’s 27 institutes and centers who were put on administrative leave, and nearly entire communications staffs were terminated, according to an agency senior leader, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution.
An email viewed by The Associated Press shows that some senior-level employees of the Bethesda, Maryland, campus who were placed on leave were offered a possible transfer to the Indian Health Service in locations including Alaska and given until the end of Wednesday to respond.
At least nine high-level CDC directors were placed on leave and were also offered reassignments to the Indian Health Service. Some public health experts outside the agency saw it as a bid to get veteran agency leaders to resign.
At CDC, union officials said programs were eliminated because of the layoffs focused on smoking, lead poisoning, gun violence, asthma and air quality, and occupational safety and health. The entire office that handles Freedom of Information Act requests was shuttered. Infectious disease programs took a hit, too, including programs that fight outbreaks in other countries and labs focused on HIV and hepatitis in the U.S. and staff trying to eliminate tuberculosis.
At the FDA, dozens of staffers who regulate drugs, food, medical devices and tobacco products received notices, including the entire office responsible for drafting new regulations for electronic cigarettes and other tobacco products. The notices came as the FDA’s tobacco chief was removed from his position. Elsewhere at the agency, more than a dozen press officers and communications supervisors were notified that their jobs would be eliminated.
“The FDA as we’ve known it is finished, with most of the leaders with institutional knowledge and a deep understanding of product development and safety no longer employed,” said former FDA Commissioner Robert Califf in an online post. Califf stepped down at the end of the Biden administration.
The layoff notices came just days after President Donald Trump moved to strip workers of their collective bargaining rights at HHS and other agencies throughout the government.
“Congress and citizens must join us in pushing back,” said Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees. “Our health, safety, and security depend on a strong, fully staffed public health system.”
Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington predicted the cuts will have ramifications when natural disasters strike or infectious diseases, like the ongoing measles outbreak, spread.
“They may as well be renaming it the Department of Disease because their plan is putting lives in serious jeopardy,” Murray said Friday.
The intent of cuts to the CDC seems to be to create “a much smaller, infectious disease agency,” but it is destroying a wide array of work and collaborations that have enabled local and national governments to be able to prevent deaths and respond to emergencies, said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.
Cuts were less drastic at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, where Trump’s Republican administration wants to avoid the appearance of debilitating the health insurance programs that cover roughly half of Americans, many of them poor, disabled and elderly.
However, the impact will still be felt, with the department slashing much of the workforce at the Office of Minority Health.
Jeffrey Grant, a former CMS deputy director, said the office is not part of a diversity, equity and inclusion program, the kind Trump’s Republican administration has sought to end.
“This is not a DEI initiative. This is meeting people where they are and meeting their specific health needs,” said Grant, who resigned last month and now helps place laid-off CMS employees into new jobs.
Beyond layoffs at federal health agencies, cuts are beginning at state and local health departments as a result of an HHS move last week to pull back more than $11 billion in COVID-19-related money. Some health departments have identified hundreds of jobs that stand to be eliminated, “some of them overnight, some of them are already gone,” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, chief executive of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.
A coalition of state attorneys general sued the Trump administration on Tuesday, arguing the cuts are illegal, would reverse progress on the opioid crisis and would throw mental health systems into chaos.
HHS has not provided additional details or comments about Tuesday’s mass firings, but on Thursday, it provided a breakdown of some of the cuts:
* 3,500 jobs at the FDA, which inspects and sets safety standards for medications, medical devices and foods.
* 2,400 jobs at the CDC, which monitors for infectious disease outbreaks and works with public health agencies nationwide.
* 1,200 jobs at the NIH, the world’s leading medical research agency.
* 300 jobs at the CMS, which oversees the Affordable Care Act marketplace, Medicare and Medicaid.
Associated Press writers Lauran Neergaard, Amanda Seitz and Matthew Perrone in Washington and Mike Stobbe in New York contributed.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
CARLA K. JOHNSON: Johnson covers research in cancer, addiction and more for The Associated Press. She is a member of AP’s Health and Science team.
"The White House is smaller than you’d think. Less a global power center, more like an old house repurposed for national business—humble upon first impression. Dining rooms double as conference spaces. Stark overhead lighting feels clinical, almost disrespectful, given the weight of history embedded in the walls. Antique furniture huddles beneath oil portraits of the Founding Fathers. The faint scent of bureaucracy hangs in the air, barely masked by a mediocre coffee machine sputtering in the corner. /// Because I’m easily distracted by such things, I spent the first half hour studying the decor, mentally redecorating. I’d add dimmers, for one. It’s the People’s House—shouldn’t we have a say in how it’s lit? If it were up to me, I’d host world leaders by candlelight. Contentious negotiations seem better suited to a slow-burning wick. I kept picturing Diane Keaton stepping in, staging a bipartisan renovation intervention: practical and handsomely patriotic pieces, rich leathers, and softer glow to ease internal and international tensions." -- Jessica Reed Kraus, March 28, 2025
Here because of Celia Farber’s article, Semana Santa!
Wishing you a safe and enjoyable journey to Malaga. Relish in the beauty of the southern most Spanish region, Andalusia. Cherish your friendship with Celia. Enjoy every moment.
Thanks for your Brutalism in Architecture article. It’s certainly an ‘ouch’, my soul resonates with all you say.
WASHINGTON, DC—APRIL 15, 2025—U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will hold a press event in Washington, D.C. to discuss the findings of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) latest Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network survey published today. According to the report, Autism prevalence in the U.S. has increased from 1 in 36 children to 1 in 31—a critical public health crisis that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is committed to investigating.
WHEN: Wednesday, April 16 at 11 a.m. ET (Press must arrive by 10 a.m. ET)
WHERE: Hubert Humphrey Building, Auditorium, 200 Independence Ave, S.W., Washington, D.C. 20201 (Must have valid ID to enter the building)
PARTICIPANTS:
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Walter M. Zahorodny, PHD, Associate Professor at Rutgers NJMS, Director of NJ Autism Study, Co-author of ADDM
Follow the Autism Action Network on X/Twitter @AutismActionNet
4/1/25: The following article---by 'news-gathering' outlet AP, was on the upper left hand corner on Drudge. Note: that level of placement on Drudge means the Dems and the MSM will be talking about it -- with their slant -- which is fine. We're in the Golden Age of Pamphleteering -- and, we ALWAYS were... so, "read thru" their rhetoric...:
"Layoffs begin at US health agencies charged with tracking disease, researching and regulating food" -- By CARLA K. JOHNSON, Updated 7:39 AM EDT, April 1, 2025
Employees across the massive U.S. Department of Health and Human Services began receiving notices of dismissal on Tuesday in a major overhaul expected to ultimately lay off up to 10,000 people. The notices come just days after President Donald Trump moved to strip workers of their collective bargaining rights at HHS and other agencies throughout the government.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s announced a plan last week to remake HHS, which, through its agencies, is responsible for tracking health trends and disease outbreaks, conducting and funding medical research, monitoring the safety of food and medicine, and administering health insurance programs for nearly half of the country.
The plan would consolidate agencies that oversee billions of dollars for addiction services [*] and community health centers across the country under a new office called the Administration for a Healthy America.
The layoffs are expected to shrink HHS to 62,000 positions, lopping off nearly a quarter of its staff — 10,000 jobs through layoffs and another 10,000 workers who took early retirement and voluntary separation offers.
Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington predicted the cuts will have ramifications when natural disasters strike or infectious diseases, like the ongoing measles outbreak, spread.
“They may as well be renaming it the Department of Disease because their plan is putting lives in serious jeopardy,” Murray said Friday during a call with reporters.
Beyond layoffs at federal health agencies, cuts are beginning to happen at state and local health departments as a result of an HHS move last week to pull back more than $11 billion in COVID-19-related funds. Local and state health officials are still assessing the impact, but some health departments have already identified hundreds of jobs that stand to be eliminated because of lost funding, “some of them overnight, some of them are already gone,” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, chief executive of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.
Union representatives for HHS employees received a notice Thursday that between 8,000 to 10,000 employees will be terminated. The department’s leadership will target positions in human resources, procurement, finance and information technology. Positions in “high cost regions” or that have been deemed “redundant” will be the focus of the layoffs.
Kennedy criticized the department he oversees as an inefficient “sprawling bureaucracy” in a Thursday video announcing the restructuring, and said the department’s $1.7 trillion yearly budget, “has failed to improve the health of Americans.”
“I want to promise you now that we’re going to do more with less,” Kennedy said.
HHS on Thursday provided a breakdown of some of the cuts.
* 3,500 jobs at the Food and Drug Administration, which inspects and sets safety standards for medications, medical devices and foods.
* 2,400 jobs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which monitors for infectious disease outbreaks and works with public health agencies nationwide.
* 1,200 jobs at the National Institutes of Health, the world’s leading health and medical research institution.
* 300 jobs at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the Affordable Care Act marketplace, Medicare and Medicaid.
At the CDC, most employees have not been unionized, but interest rose sharply this year as the Trump administration took steps to reduce the federal workforce. Roughly 2,000 CDC employees in Atlanta belonged to the American Federation of Government Employees local bargaining unit, with hundreds more who had petitioned to join this week being added.
But on Thursday night, Trump signed an executive order that would end collective bargaining for a large number of federal agencies, including the CDC and other health agencies.
The erosion of collective bargaining rights was decried by some Democratic lawmakers.
“President Trump’s brazen attempt to strip the majority of federal employees of their union rights robs these workers of their hard-fought protections. This will only give Elon Musk more power to dismantle the people’s government with as little resistance from dedicated civil servants as possible — further weakening the federal government’s ability to serve the American people,” according to a joint statement Friday by U.S. Rep. Gerald Connolly and U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, both of Virginia.
~
Associated Press writer Amanda Seitz in Washington and Mike Stobbe in New York contributed.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
CARLA K. JOHNSON: Johnson covers research in cancer, addiction and more for The Associated Press. She is a member of AP’s Health and Science team.
"Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to lay off the entire staff of the federal government's Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy (OIDP)." -- Aaron Parnas, March 29, 2025
"HUD joins forces with DHS to ensure federal housing resources go to US citizens, not illegal immigrants" -- by Alec Schemmel (3/25/25)
Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner and Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem have forged a new inter-agency initiative aimed at ensuring federal housing funds do not go to illegal immigrants.
"RFK Jr. Plans 10,000 Job Cuts in Major Restructuring of Health Department; Changes would reshape the nation’s health agencies and close regional offices" -- by Liz Essley Whyte and Natalie Andrews (3/27/25)
WASHINGTON—Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he would significantly cut the size of the department he leads, reshaping the nation’s health agencies and closing regional offices.
Kennedy on Thursday said the agency would ax 10,000 full-time employees spread across agencies tasked with responding to disease outbreaks, approving new drugs, providing insurance for the poorest Americans and more. The cuts are in addition to roughly 10,000 employees who chose to leave the department through voluntary separation offers since President Trump took office, according to the department.
Together, the cuts would eliminate about one-quarter of a workforce that would shrink to 62,000. The department would lose five of its 10 regional offices. HHS said essential health services wouldn’t be affected.
“We’re going to eliminate an entire alphabet soup of departments and agencies while preserving their core function,” Kennedy said in a video posted on X.
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/rfk-jr-plans-10-000-job-cuts-in-major-restructuring-of-health-department-bdec28b0
March 28, 2025:
‘Long-overdue Crack in the Dam’: RFK Jr. to Create CDC Sub-agency Focused on Vaccine Injuries
Vaccine safety advocates hailed HHS Secretary Kennedy’s plan to create an agency within the CDC focused on vaccine injuries and also long COVID and Lyme disease. In an interview with Chris Cuomo, Kennedy also revealed that when he asked an HHS agency for patient data, he was told he’d have to purchase it.
by Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., March 28, 2025
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/rfk-jr-hhs-secretary-cdc-sub-agency-vaccine-injuries/
Version-2: 7:05 PM EDT, April 1, 2025
4/1/25: The following article---by 'news-gathering' outlet AP, was on the upper left hand corner on Drudge. Note: that level of placement on Drudge means the Dems and the MSM will be talking about it -- with their slant -- which is fine. We're in the Golden Age of Pamphleteering -- and, we ALWAYS were... so, "read thru" their rhetoric...:
"Mass layoffs are underway at the nation’s public health agencies" -- By CARLA K. JOHNSON
Updated 7:05 PM EDT, April 1, 2025
https://apnews.com/article/health-human-services-layoffs-restructuring-rfk-jr-ec4d7731695e4204970c7eab953b2289
Employees across the massive U.S. Health and Human Services Department received notices Tuesday that their jobs were being eliminated, part of a sweeping overhaul designed to vastly shrink the agencies responsible for protecting and promoting Americans’ health.
The cuts include researchers, scientists, doctors, support staff and senior leaders, leaving the federal government without many of the key experts who have long guided U.S. decisions on medical research, drug approvals and other issues.
“The revolution begins today!” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote on social media as he celebrated the swearing-in of his latest hires: Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the new director of the National Institutes of Health and Martin Makary, the new Food and Drug Administration commissioner. Kennedy’s post came just hours after employees began receiving emailed layoff notices. He later wrote, “Our hearts go out to those who have lost their jobs,” but said that the department needs to be “recalibrated” to emphasize disease prevention.
Kennedy announced a plan last week to remake the department, which, through its agencies, is responsible for tracking health trends and disease outbreaks, conducting and funding medical research, and monitoring the safety of food and medicine, as well as for administering health insurance programs for nearly half the country.
The plan would consolidate agencies that oversee billions of dollars for addiction services and community health centers under a new office called the Administration for a Healthy America.
HHS said layoffs are expected to save $1.8 billion annually — about 0.1% — from the department’s $1.7 trillion budget, most of which is spent on Medicare and Medicaid health insurance coverage for millions of Americans.
The layoffs are expected to shrink HHS to 62,000 positions, lopping off nearly a quarter of its staff — 10,000 jobs through layoffs and another 10,000 workers who took early retirement and voluntary separation offers. Many of the jobs are based in the Washington area, but also in Atlanta, where the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is based, and in smaller offices throughout the country.
Some staffers began getting termination notices in their work inboxes at 5 a.m., while others found out their jobs had been eliminated after standing in long lines outside offices in Washington, Maryland and Atlanta to see if their badges still worked.
Some gathered at local coffee shops and lunch spots after being turned away, finding out they had been eliminated after decades of service.
One wondered aloud if it was a cruel April Fools’ Day joke. Adding to the confusion, some layoff notices included instructions to file equal employment complaints to a person who had died in November.
At the NIH, cuts included at least four directors of the NIH’s 27 institutes and centers who were put on administrative leave, and nearly entire communications staffs were terminated, according to an agency senior leader, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution.
An email viewed by The Associated Press shows that some senior-level employees of the Bethesda, Maryland, campus who were placed on leave were offered a possible transfer to the Indian Health Service in locations including Alaska and given until the end of Wednesday to respond.
At least nine high-level CDC directors were placed on leave and were also offered reassignments to the Indian Health Service. Some public health experts outside the agency saw it as a bid to get veteran agency leaders to resign.
At CDC, union officials said programs were eliminated because of the layoffs focused on smoking, lead poisoning, gun violence, asthma and air quality, and occupational safety and health. The entire office that handles Freedom of Information Act requests was shuttered. Infectious disease programs took a hit, too, including programs that fight outbreaks in other countries and labs focused on HIV and hepatitis in the U.S. and staff trying to eliminate tuberculosis.
At the FDA, dozens of staffers who regulate drugs, food, medical devices and tobacco products received notices, including the entire office responsible for drafting new regulations for electronic cigarettes and other tobacco products. The notices came as the FDA’s tobacco chief was removed from his position. Elsewhere at the agency, more than a dozen press officers and communications supervisors were notified that their jobs would be eliminated.
“The FDA as we’ve known it is finished, with most of the leaders with institutional knowledge and a deep understanding of product development and safety no longer employed,” said former FDA Commissioner Robert Califf in an online post. Califf stepped down at the end of the Biden administration.
The layoff notices came just days after President Donald Trump moved to strip workers of their collective bargaining rights at HHS and other agencies throughout the government.
“Congress and citizens must join us in pushing back,” said Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees. “Our health, safety, and security depend on a strong, fully staffed public health system.”
Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington predicted the cuts will have ramifications when natural disasters strike or infectious diseases, like the ongoing measles outbreak, spread.
“They may as well be renaming it the Department of Disease because their plan is putting lives in serious jeopardy,” Murray said Friday.
The intent of cuts to the CDC seems to be to create “a much smaller, infectious disease agency,” but it is destroying a wide array of work and collaborations that have enabled local and national governments to be able to prevent deaths and respond to emergencies, said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.
Cuts were less drastic at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, where Trump’s Republican administration wants to avoid the appearance of debilitating the health insurance programs that cover roughly half of Americans, many of them poor, disabled and elderly.
However, the impact will still be felt, with the department slashing much of the workforce at the Office of Minority Health.
Jeffrey Grant, a former CMS deputy director, said the office is not part of a diversity, equity and inclusion program, the kind Trump’s Republican administration has sought to end.
“This is not a DEI initiative. This is meeting people where they are and meeting their specific health needs,” said Grant, who resigned last month and now helps place laid-off CMS employees into new jobs.
Beyond layoffs at federal health agencies, cuts are beginning at state and local health departments as a result of an HHS move last week to pull back more than $11 billion in COVID-19-related money. Some health departments have identified hundreds of jobs that stand to be eliminated, “some of them overnight, some of them are already gone,” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, chief executive of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.
A coalition of state attorneys general sued the Trump administration on Tuesday, arguing the cuts are illegal, would reverse progress on the opioid crisis and would throw mental health systems into chaos.
HHS has not provided additional details or comments about Tuesday’s mass firings, but on Thursday, it provided a breakdown of some of the cuts:
* 3,500 jobs at the FDA, which inspects and sets safety standards for medications, medical devices and foods.
* 2,400 jobs at the CDC, which monitors for infectious disease outbreaks and works with public health agencies nationwide.
* 1,200 jobs at the NIH, the world’s leading medical research agency.
* 300 jobs at the CMS, which oversees the Affordable Care Act marketplace, Medicare and Medicaid.
Associated Press writers Lauran Neergaard, Amanda Seitz and Matthew Perrone in Washington and Mike Stobbe in New York contributed.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
CARLA K. JOHNSON: Johnson covers research in cancer, addiction and more for The Associated Press. She is a member of AP’s Health and Science team.
"The White House is smaller than you’d think. Less a global power center, more like an old house repurposed for national business—humble upon first impression. Dining rooms double as conference spaces. Stark overhead lighting feels clinical, almost disrespectful, given the weight of history embedded in the walls. Antique furniture huddles beneath oil portraits of the Founding Fathers. The faint scent of bureaucracy hangs in the air, barely masked by a mediocre coffee machine sputtering in the corner. /// Because I’m easily distracted by such things, I spent the first half hour studying the decor, mentally redecorating. I’d add dimmers, for one. It’s the People’s House—shouldn’t we have a say in how it’s lit? If it were up to me, I’d host world leaders by candlelight. Contentious negotiations seem better suited to a slow-burning wick. I kept picturing Diane Keaton stepping in, staging a bipartisan renovation intervention: practical and handsomely patriotic pieces, rich leathers, and softer glow to ease internal and international tensions." -- Jessica Reed Kraus, March 28, 2025
https://jessicareedkraus.substack.com/p/white-house-inhabit
Comment: The light cast by LED-lights is our era’s Brutalism…
Here because of Celia Farber’s article, Semana Santa!
Wishing you a safe and enjoyable journey to Malaga. Relish in the beauty of the southern most Spanish region, Andalusia. Cherish your friendship with Celia. Enjoy every moment.
Thanks for your Brutalism in Architecture article. It’s certainly an ‘ouch’, my soul resonates with all you say.
thank you, Ruth!
4/16/2025:
HHS Secretary Kennedy to Hold Press Conference Today 4/16 on Latest CDC Data Showing Alarming Increase of Autism Epidemic
Live on CSPAN.org 11 am EST
MEDIA ADVISORY
WASHINGTON, DC—APRIL 15, 2025—U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will hold a press event in Washington, D.C. to discuss the findings of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) latest Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network survey published today. According to the report, Autism prevalence in the U.S. has increased from 1 in 36 children to 1 in 31—a critical public health crisis that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is committed to investigating.
WHEN: Wednesday, April 16 at 11 a.m. ET (Press must arrive by 10 a.m. ET)
WHERE: Hubert Humphrey Building, Auditorium, 200 Independence Ave, S.W., Washington, D.C. 20201 (Must have valid ID to enter the building)
PARTICIPANTS:
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Walter M. Zahorodny, PHD, Associate Professor at Rutgers NJMS, Director of NJ Autism Study, Co-author of ADDM
Follow the Autism Action Network on X/Twitter @AutismActionNet
Version-1: Updated 7:39 AM EDT, April 1, 2025
4/1/25: The following article---by 'news-gathering' outlet AP, was on the upper left hand corner on Drudge. Note: that level of placement on Drudge means the Dems and the MSM will be talking about it -- with their slant -- which is fine. We're in the Golden Age of Pamphleteering -- and, we ALWAYS were... so, "read thru" their rhetoric...:
"Layoffs begin at US health agencies charged with tracking disease, researching and regulating food" -- By CARLA K. JOHNSON, Updated 7:39 AM EDT, April 1, 2025
https://apnews.com/article/health-human-services-layoffs-restructuring-rfk-jr-ec4d7731695e4204970c7eab953b2289
Employees across the massive U.S. Department of Health and Human Services began receiving notices of dismissal on Tuesday in a major overhaul expected to ultimately lay off up to 10,000 people. The notices come just days after President Donald Trump moved to strip workers of their collective bargaining rights at HHS and other agencies throughout the government.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s announced a plan last week to remake HHS, which, through its agencies, is responsible for tracking health trends and disease outbreaks, conducting and funding medical research, monitoring the safety of food and medicine, and administering health insurance programs for nearly half of the country.
The plan would consolidate agencies that oversee billions of dollars for addiction services [*] and community health centers across the country under a new office called the Administration for a Healthy America.
[* 3/30/25: "When ‘Make America Healthy Again’ Actually Means the Opposite; As part of a ‘painful period’ of cuts, Trump and RFK Jr. plan on dismantling the agency that focuses on substance abuse." https://www.thebulwark.com/p/when-make-america-healthy-again-actually-means-opposite-rfk-trump-opioid-overdose-hhs-samhsa-painful ]
The layoffs are expected to shrink HHS to 62,000 positions, lopping off nearly a quarter of its staff — 10,000 jobs through layoffs and another 10,000 workers who took early retirement and voluntary separation offers.
Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington predicted the cuts will have ramifications when natural disasters strike or infectious diseases, like the ongoing measles outbreak, spread.
“They may as well be renaming it the Department of Disease because their plan is putting lives in serious jeopardy,” Murray said Friday during a call with reporters.
Beyond layoffs at federal health agencies, cuts are beginning to happen at state and local health departments as a result of an HHS move last week to pull back more than $11 billion in COVID-19-related funds. Local and state health officials are still assessing the impact, but some health departments have already identified hundreds of jobs that stand to be eliminated because of lost funding, “some of them overnight, some of them are already gone,” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, chief executive of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.
Union representatives for HHS employees received a notice Thursday that between 8,000 to 10,000 employees will be terminated. The department’s leadership will target positions in human resources, procurement, finance and information technology. Positions in “high cost regions” or that have been deemed “redundant” will be the focus of the layoffs.
Kennedy criticized the department he oversees as an inefficient “sprawling bureaucracy” in a Thursday video announcing the restructuring, and said the department’s $1.7 trillion yearly budget, “has failed to improve the health of Americans.”
“I want to promise you now that we’re going to do more with less,” Kennedy said.
HHS on Thursday provided a breakdown of some of the cuts.
* 3,500 jobs at the Food and Drug Administration, which inspects and sets safety standards for medications, medical devices and foods.
* 2,400 jobs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which monitors for infectious disease outbreaks and works with public health agencies nationwide.
* 1,200 jobs at the National Institutes of Health, the world’s leading health and medical research institution.
* 300 jobs at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the Affordable Care Act marketplace, Medicare and Medicaid.
At the CDC, most employees have not been unionized, but interest rose sharply this year as the Trump administration took steps to reduce the federal workforce. Roughly 2,000 CDC employees in Atlanta belonged to the American Federation of Government Employees local bargaining unit, with hundreds more who had petitioned to join this week being added.
But on Thursday night, Trump signed an executive order that would end collective bargaining for a large number of federal agencies, including the CDC and other health agencies.
The erosion of collective bargaining rights was decried by some Democratic lawmakers.
“President Trump’s brazen attempt to strip the majority of federal employees of their union rights robs these workers of their hard-fought protections. This will only give Elon Musk more power to dismantle the people’s government with as little resistance from dedicated civil servants as possible — further weakening the federal government’s ability to serve the American people,” according to a joint statement Friday by U.S. Rep. Gerald Connolly and U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, both of Virginia.
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Associated Press writer Amanda Seitz in Washington and Mike Stobbe in New York contributed.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
CARLA K. JOHNSON: Johnson covers research in cancer, addiction and more for The Associated Press. She is a member of AP’s Health and Science team.
"Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to lay off the entire staff of the federal government's Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy (OIDP)." -- Aaron Parnas, March 29, 2025
https://aaronparnas.substack.com/p/tesla-protests-grow-across-the-world
https://www.hhs.gov/oidp/index.html
"HUD joins forces with DHS to ensure federal housing resources go to US citizens, not illegal immigrants" -- by Alec Schemmel (3/25/25)
Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner and Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem have forged a new inter-agency initiative aimed at ensuring federal housing funds do not go to illegal immigrants.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/hud-joins-forces-with-dhs-to-ensure-federal-housing-resources-go-to-us-citizens-not-illegal-immigrants/ar-AA1BE2RP