How Deeply Trump Has Cut Federal Health Agencies

How Deeply Trump Has Cut Federal Health Agencies
by Brandon Roberts, Annie Waldman and Pratheek Rebala, Illustrations by Sam Green for ProPublica

Aug. 21, 2025


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.

Food and drug facility inspectors are having to go to the store and buy supplies on their own dime so they can take swab samples to test for pathogens. ................(more)

https://projects.propublica.org/federal-health-worker-cuts-rfk-trump-administration/