ProPublica took a deep look at the carnage inflicted by Bobby Jr and his snake oil cronies on America’s health agencies. It’s devastating:
When the Trump administration announced massive cuts to federal health agencies earlier this year, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he was getting rid of excess administrators who were larding the government with bureaucratic bloat.
But a groundbreaking data analysis by ProPublica shows the administration has cut deeper than it has acknowledged. Though Kennedy said he would add scientists to the workforce, agencies have lost thousands of them, along with colleagues who those scientists depended on to dispatch checks, fix computers and order lab supplies, enabling them to do their jobs.
Done in the name of government efficiency, these reductions have left departments stretching to perform their basic functions, ProPublica found, according to interviews with more than three dozen former and current federal employees.
It’s very bad:
No health agency has been spared, with some important divisions losing more than 1 in 5 workers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in charge of public health, lost 15% of its staff; the National Institutes of Health, the largest funder of biomedical research in the world, 16%; and the Food and Drug Administration, which ensures the safety of most of what goes into people’s bodies — from baby formula to cancer drugs to hip implants — 21%.
Thousands of these employees were laid off or had their contracts cut, while some took buyouts or retired earlier than anticipated. Divisions have experienced a brain drain of epic proportions, ProPublica found, losing senior leaders behind some of the biggest health initiatives of the modern era, like the rapid rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Many of the cuts contradict what the administration has said about its priorities.
The secretary who has questioned the safety of vaccines has pushed out scores of regulators who work to make vaccines safe. And while he has declared a new era in the fight against chronic disease, he has decimated a center dedicated to that very goal.
Division leaders and staffers told ProPublica the cuts will lead their agencies to neglect their duties: Federal researchers will conduct fewer clinical trials and studies, regulators will conduct fewer or less-thorough inspections of egg farms and foreign drug factories, and public health specialists will be less prepared to combat outbreaks of deadly viruses. With exit and severance packages pending, many former and current workers would only speak anonymously, out of fear of retribution.
We’re just withdrawing completely from leadership in everything but brain dead stupidity.
Read the whole thing. It’s much worse than I thought.
