Latest news with #GeorgesBenjamin
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
‘All public health is local': Experts sound alarm on consequences of HHS shuttering regional offices
On a recent visit to Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan, some floors in the mammoth office building bustled with people seeking services or facing legal proceedings at federal agencies such as the Social Security Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In the lobby, dozens of people took photos to celebrate becoming U.S. citizens. At the Department of Homeland Security, a man was led off the elevator in handcuffs. But the area housing the regional office of the Department of Health and Human Services was eerily quiet. Healthbeat has looked into the concerns experts are voicing about the HHS closing regional offices around the country. In March, HHS announced it would close five of its 10 regional offices as part of a broad restructuring to consolidate the department's work and reduce the number of staff by 20,000, to 62,000. The HHS Region 2 office in New York City, which has served New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, was among those getting the ax. Public health experts and advocates say that HHS regional offices, like the one in New York City, form the connective tissue between the federal government and many locally based services. Whether ensuring local social service programs like Head Start get their federal grants, investigating Medicare claims complaints, or facilitating hospital and health system provider enrollment in Medicare and Medicaid programs, regional offices provide a key federal access point for people and organizations. Consolidating regional offices could have serious consequences for the nation's public health system, they warn. 'All public health is local,' said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. 'When you have relative proximity to the folks you're liaising to, they have a sense of the needs of those communities, and they have a sense of the political issues that are going on in these communities.' The other offices slated to close are in Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle. Together, the five serve 22 states and a handful of U.S. territories. Services for the shuttered regional offices will be divvied up among the remaining regional offices in Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Kansas City, and Philadelphia. The elimination of regional HHS offices has already had an outsize impact on Head Start, a long-standing federal program that provides free child care and supportive services to children from many of the nation's families under the poverty threshold. It is among the examples cited in the lawsuit against the federal government challenging the HHS restructuring brought by New York, 18 other states, and the District of Columbia, which notes that, as a result, 'many programs are at imminent risk of being forced to pause or cease operations.' The HHS site included a regional Head Start office that was closed and laid off staff last month. The Trump administration had sought to wipe out funding for Head Start, according to a draft budget document that outlines dramatic cuts at HHS, which Congress would need to approve. Recent news reports indicate the administration may be stepping back from this plan; however, other childhood and early development programs could still be on the chopping block. Bonnie Eggenburg, president of the New Jersey Head Start Association, said her organization has long relied on the HHS regional office to be 'our boots on the ground for the federal government.' During challenging times, such as the COVID-19 pandemic or hurricanes Sandy and Maria, the regional office helped Head Start programs design services to meet the needs of children and families. 'They work with us to make sure we have all the support we can get,' she said. In recent weeks, payroll and other operational payments have been delayed, and employees have been asked to justify why they need the money as part of a new 'Defend the Spend' initiative instituted by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, created by President Donald Trump through an executive order. 'Right now, most programs don't have anyone to talk to and are unsure as to whether or not that notice of award is coming through as expected,' Eggenburg said. HHS regional office employees who worked on Head Start helped providers fix technical issues, address budget questions, and discuss local issues, like the city's growing population of migrant children, said Susan Stamler, executive director of United Neighborhood Houses. Based in New York City, the organization represents dozens of neighborhood settlement houses — community groups that provide services to local families such as language classes, housing assistance, and early childhood support, including some Head Start programs. 'Today, the real problem is people weren't given a human contact,' she said of the regional office closure. 'They were given a website.' To Stamler, closing the regional Head Start hub without a clear transition plan 'demonstrates a lack of respect for the people who are running these programs and services,' while leaving families uncertain about their child care and other services. 'It's astonishing to think that the federal government might be re-examining this investment that pays off so deeply with families and in their communities,' she said. Without regional offices, HHS will be less informed about which health initiatives are needed locally, said Zach Hennessey, chief strategy officer of Public Health Solutions, a nonprofit provider of health services in New York City. 'Where it really matters is within HHS itself,' he said. 'Those are the folks that are now blind — but their decisions will ultimately affect us.' Dara Kass, an emergency physician who was the HHS Region 2 director under the Biden administration, described the job as being an ambassador. 'The office is really about ensuring that the community members and constituents had access to everything that was available to them from HHS,' Kass said. At HHS Region 2, division offices for the Administration for Community Living, the FDA's Office of Inspections and Investigations, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration have already closed or are slated to close, along with several other division offices. HHS did not provide an on-the-record response to a request for comment but has maintained that shuttering regional offices will not hurt services. Under the reorganization, many HHS agencies are either being eliminated or folded into other agencies, including the recently created Administration for a Healthy America, under HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 'We aren't just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,' Kennedy said in a press release announcing the reorganization. Regional office staffers were laid off at the beginning of April. Now there appears to be a skeleton crew shutting down the offices. On a recent day, an Administration for Children and Families worker who answered a visitor's buzz at the entrance estimated that only about 15 people remained. When asked what's next, the employee shrugged. The Trump administration's downsizing effort will also eliminate six of 10 regional outposts of the HHS Office of the General Counsel, a squad of lawyers supporting the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and other agencies in beneficiary coverage disputes and issues related to provider enrollment and participation in federal programs. Unlike private health insurance companies, Medicare is a federal health program governed by statutes and regulations, said Andrew Tsui, a partner at Arnall Golden Gregory who has co-written about the regional office closings. 'When you have the largest federal health insurance program on the planet, to the extent there could be ambiguity or appeals or grievances,' Tsui said, 'resolving them necessarily requires the expertise of federal lawyers, trained in federal law.' Overall, the loss of the regional HHS offices is just one more blow to public health efforts at the state and local levels. State health officials are confronting the 'total disorganization of the federal transition' and cuts to key federal partners like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CMS, and the FDA, said James McDonald, the New York state health commissioner. 'What I'm seeing is, right now, it's not clear who our people ought to contact, what information we're supposed to get,' he said. 'We're just not seeing the same partnership that we so relied on in the past.' This story was produced by Healthbeat and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
Daily Mail
09-06-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
RFK Jr orders MAJOR shakeup among top vaccine advisors as he unleashes blitzkrieg against CDC
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday booted every member of a committee that advises the CDC on how to use vaccines and pledged to replace them with his own picks in a massive shakeup. He said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed Monday that all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices with be 'retired.' Kennedy, one of the nation´s leading anti-vaccine skeptics before becoming the nation´s top health official, has not said who he would appoint to the panel, but said it would convene in just two weeks in Atlanta. Although it´s typically not viewed as a partisan board, the Biden administration had installed the entire committee. 'Without removing the current members, the current Trump administration would not have been able to appoint a majority of new members until 2028,' Kennedy wrote 'A clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science. ' Kennedy said the committee members had too many conflicts of interest. Committee members routinely disclose any possible conflicts at the start of public meetings. Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, called Kennedy's mass ouster 'a coup.' 'It´s not how democracies work. It´s not good for the health of the nation,' Benjamin told The Associated Press. Benjamin said the move raises real concerns about whether future committee members will be viewed as impartial. He added that Kennedy is going against what he told lawmakers and the public, and the public health association plans to watch Kennedy 'like a hawk.' 'He is breaking a promise,' Benjamin said. 'He said he wasn´t going to do this.' Dr. Bruce A. Scott, president of the American Medical Association, called the committee a trusted source of science- and data-driven advice and said Kennedy´s move, coupled with declining vaccination rates across the country, will help drive an increase in vaccine-preventable diseases. 'Today´s action to remove the 17 sitting members of ACIP undermines that trust and upends a transparent process that has saved countless lives,' Scott said in a statement. Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a doctor who had expressed reservations about Kennedy´s nomination but voted to install him as the nation´s health secretary nonetheless, said he had spoken with Kennedy moments after the announcement. 'Of course, now the fear is that the ACIP will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion,' Cassidy said in a social media post. 'I´ve just spoken with Secretary Kennedy, and I´ll continue to talk with him to ensure this is not the case.' Cassidy, a physician, had major concerns with Kennedy's ever-changing position on vaccines, but in the end, he was convinced by Kennedy and MAGA allies to back the known vaccine skeptic. 'Mr. Kennedy and the administration committed that he and I would have an unprecedentedly close, collaborative working relationship if he is confirmed,' Cassidy said on the floor of the Senate after advancing his nomination. 'We will meet or speak multiple times a month. This collaboration will allow us to work well together and therefore to be more effective,' Cassidy claimed. Cassidy, who chairs the HELP Committee, grilled Kennedy over his stance on vaccines and pressed him to deny there were a link between vaccines and autism, but Kennedy would not unequivocally say it. At the end of the hearing, the senator said he was 'struggling' with Kennedy's over his past statements which undermined confidence in childhood vaccines. The committee had been in a state of flux since Kennedy took over. Its first meeting this year had been delayed when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services abruptly postponed its February meeting. During Kennedy´s confirmation, Cassidy had expressed concerns about preserving the committee, saying he had sought assurances that Kennedy would keep the panel's current vaccine recommendations. Kennedy did not stick to that. He recently took the unusual step of changing COVID-19 recommendations without first consulting the advisers. The webpage that featured the committee´s members was deleted Monday evening, shortly after Kennedy´s announcement. Longtime Trump foe Sen. Mitch McConnell, 82, was the only Republican to vote against RFK Jr. He also voted 'no' on Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence and Pete Hegseth for Pentagon chief. Trump tapped the 70-year-old former Democrat to be the country's top health official with the mandate to 'Make America Healthy Again.' But Kennedy was put under the microscope ahead of the vote for his past controversial stances on vaccinations, abortion and for promoting conspiracy theories. The vote came after Kennedy cleared a procedural hurdle early Wednesday where senators voted directly along party lines to advance his nomination. But his entire confirmation path was rocky as the nominee faced pushback from Democrats who accused him of being anti-vaccine and anti-science. Some members of his famous Kennedy family also came out against his confirmation with scathing attacks on his character. But Kennedy and Trump struck up a relationship which paid off after the onetime Democratic and then Independent presidential candidate dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed Trump last summer. Trump named his one-time critic his pick to be the country's top health official just days after the November election.
Miami Herald
20-05-2025
- Health
- Miami Herald
In bustling NYC federal building, HHS offices are eerily quiet
NEW YORK - On a recent visit to Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan, some floors in the mammoth office building bustled with people seeking services or facing legal proceedings at federal agencies such as the Social Security Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In the lobby, dozens of people took photos to celebrate becoming U.S. citizens. At the Department of Homeland Security, a man was led off the elevator in handcuffs. But the area housing the regional office of the Department of Health and Human Services was eerily quiet. In March, HHS announced it would close five of its 10 regional offices as part of a broad restructuring to consolidate the department's work and reduce the number of staff by 20,000, to 62,000. The HHS Region 2 office in New York City, which has served New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, was among those getting the ax. Public health experts and advocates say that HHS regional offices, like the one in New York City, form the connective tissue between the federal government and many locally based services. Whether ensuring local social service programs like Head Start get their federal grants, investigating Medicare claims complaints, or facilitating hospital and health system provider enrollment in Medicare and Medicaid programs, regional offices provide a key federal access point for people and organizations. Consolidating regional offices could have serious consequences for the nation's public health system, they warn. "All public health is local," said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. "When you have relative proximity to the folks you're liaising to, they have a sense of the needs of those communities, and they have a sense of the political issues that are going on in these communities." The other offices slated to close are in Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle. Together, the five serve 22 states and a handful of U.S. territories. Services for the shuttered regional offices will be divvied up among the remaining regional offices in Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Kansas City, and Philadelphia. The elimination of regional HHS offices has already had an outsize impact on Head Start, a long-standing federal program that provides free child care and supportive services to children from many of the nation's poorest families. It is among the examples cited in the lawsuit against the federal government challenging the HHS restructuring brought by New York, 18 other states, and the District of Columbia, which notes that, as a result, "many programs are at imminent risk of being forced to pause or cease operations." The HHS site included a regional Head Start office that was closed and laid off staff last month. The Trump administration had sought to wipe out funding for Head Start, according to a draft budget document that outlines dramatic cuts at HHS, which Congress would need to approve. Recent news reports indicate the administration may be stepping back from this plan; however, other childhood and early-development programs could still be on the chopping block. Bonnie Eggenburg, president of the New Jersey Head Start Association, said her organization has long relied on the HHS regional office to be "our boots on the ground for the federal government." During challenging times, such as the covid-19 pandemic or Hurricanes Sandy and Maria, the regional office helped Head Start programs design services to meet the needs of children and families. "They work with us to make sure we have all the support we can get," she said. In recent weeks, payroll and other operational payments have been delayed, and employees have been asked to justify why they need the money as part of a new " Defend the Spend" initiative instituted by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, created by President Donald Trump through an executive order. "Right now, most programs don't have anyone to talk to and are unsure as to whether or not that notice of award is coming through as expected," Eggenburg said. HHS regional office employees who worked on Head Start helped providers fix technical issues, address budget questions, and discuss local issues, like the city's growing population of migrant children, said Susan Stamler, executive director of United Neighborhood Houses. Based in New York City, the organization represents dozens of neighborhood settlement houses - community groups that provide services to local families such as language classes, housing assistance, and early-childhood support, including some Head Start programs. "Today, the real problem is people weren't given a human contact," she said of the regional office closure. "They were given a website." To Stamler, closing the regional Head Start hub without a clear transition plan "demonstrates a lack of respect for the people who are running these programs and services," while leaving families uncertain about their child care and other services. "It's astonishing to think that the federal government might be reexamining this investment that pays off so deeply with families and in their communities," she said. Without regional offices, HHS will be less informed about which health initiatives are needed locally, said Zach Hennessey, chief strategy officer of Public Health Solutions, a nonprofit provider of health services in New York City. "Where it really matters is within HHS itself," he said. "Those are the folks that are now blind - but their decisions will ultimately affect us." Dara Kass, an emergency physician who was the HHS Region 2 director under the Biden administration, described the job as being an ambassador. "The office is really about ensuring that the community members and constituents had access to everything that was available to them from HHS," Kass said. At HHS Region 2, division offices for the Administration for Community Living, the FDA's Office of Inspections and Investigations, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration have already closed or are slated to close, along with several other division offices. HHS did not provide an on-the-record response to a request for comment but has maintained that shuttering regional offices will not hurt services. Under the reorganization, many HHS agencies are either being eliminated or folded into other agencies, including the recently created Administration for a Healthy America, under HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "We aren't just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic," Kennedy said in a press release announcing the reorganization. Regional office staffers were laid off at the beginning of April. Now there appears to be a skeleton crew shutting down the offices. On a recent day, an Administration for Children and Families worker who answered a visitor's buzz at the entrance estimated that only about 15 people remained. When asked what's next, the employee shrugged. The Trump administration's downsizing effort will also eliminate six of 10 regional outposts of the HHS Office of the General Counsel, a squad of lawyers supporting the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and other agencies in beneficiary coverage disputes and issues related to provider enrollment and participation in federal programs. Unlike private health insurance companies, Medicare is a federal health program governed by statutes and regulations, said Andrew Tsui, a partner at Arnall Golden Gregory who has co-written about the regional office closings. "When you have the largest federal health insurance program on the planet, to the extent there could be ambiguity or appeals or grievances," Tsui said, "resolving them necessarily requires the expertise of federal lawyers, trained in federal law." Overall, the loss of the regional HHS offices is just one more blow to public health efforts at the state and local levels. State health officials are confronting the "total disorganization of the federal transition" and cuts to key federal partners like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CMS, and the FDA, said James McDonald, the New York state health commissioner. "What I'm seeing is, right now, it's not clear who our people ought to contact, what information we're supposed to get," he said. "We're just not seeing the same partnership that we so relied on in the past." ____ Healthbeat is a nonprofit newsroom covering public health published byCivic News CompanyandKFF Health News. Sign up for its newslettershere. Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
New York Times
20-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
The President Will Destroy You Now
One thing stands out amid all the chaos, corruption and disorder: the wanton destructiveness of the Trump presidency. The targets of Trump's assaults include the law, higher education, medical research, ethical standards, America's foreign alliances, free speech, the civil service, religion, the media and much more. J. Michael Luttig, a former federal appeals court judge appointed by President George H.W. Bush, succinctly described his own view of the Trump presidency, writing by email that there has never before Some of the damage Trump has inflicted can be repaired by future administrations, but repairing relations with American allies, the restoration of lost government expertise and a return to productive research may take years, even with a new and determined president and Congress. Let's look at just one target of the administration's vendetta, medical research. Trump's attacks include cancellation of thousands of grants, cuts in the share of grants going to universities and hospitals; and proposed cuts of 40 percent or more in the budgets of the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Science Foundation. 'This is going to completely kneecap biomedical research in this country,' Jennifer Zeitzer, deputy executive director at the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, told Science Magazine. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, warned that cuts will 'totally destroy the nation's public health infrastructure.' I asked scholars of the presidency to evaluate the scope of Trump's wreckage. 'The gutting of expertise and experience going on right now under the blatantly false pretext of eliminating fraud and waste,' Sean Wilentz, a professor of history at Princeton, wrote by email, 'is catastrophic and may never be completely repaired.' I asked Wilentz whether Trump was unique with respect to his destructiveness or if there were presidential precedents. Wilentz replied: Another question: Was Trump re-elected to promote an agenda of wreaking havoc, or is he pursuing an elitist right-wing program created by conservative ideologues who saw in Trump's election the opportunity to pursue their goals? Wilentz's reply: I asked Andrew Rudalevige, a political scientist at Bowdoin, how permanent the mayhem Trump has inflicted may prove to be. 'Not to be flip,' Rudalevige replied by email, 'but for children abroad denied food or lifesaving medicine because of arbitrary aid cuts the answer is already distressingly permanent.' From a broader perspective, Rudalevige wrote: I sent the question I posed to Wilentz to other scholars of the presidency. It produced a wide variety of answers. Here is Rudalevige's: Another question: How much is Trump's second term agenda the invention of conservative elites and how much is it a response to the demands of Trump's MAGA supporters? 'Trump is not at all an unwitting victim,' Rudalevige wrote, 'but those around him with wider and more systemic goals have more authority and are better organized in pursuit of those goals than they were in the first term.' In this context, Rudalevige continued, the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 In the past, when presidential power has expanded, Rudalevige argued, One widely shared view among those I queried is that Trump has severely damaged American's relations with traditional allies everywhere. Mara Rudman, a professor at the University of Virginia's Miller Center, wrote in an email: Trump is not unique in his destructiveness, in Rudman's view, Trump's second term agenda, Rudman argued, is elite-driven: Bruce Cain, a political scientist at Stanford, shares the belief that Trump has taken a wrecking ball to foreign relations. Cain emailed me his assessment: Similarly, Cain continued, Cain argued that in both economics and politics, destruction can have beneficial results, but not in the case of Donald Trump. Musk and Trump, in Cain's view, 'are driven more by instinct than knowledge, vindictiveness than good intentions and impatience than carefully designed plans.' They In ranking the most destructive presidents, the scholars I contacted mentioned both Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan. Geoffrey Kabaservice, vice president for political studies at the Niskanen Center, a center-left libertarian think tank, wrote by email: Paul Rosenzweig, a former deputy assistant secretary for policy in the Department of Homeland Security under George W. Bush and a lecturer in law at George Washington University, was even more pessimistic, writing in an email that he fears that Rosenzweig believes that I asked the experts I contacted whether Trump was laying the groundwork for a more autocratic form of government in the United States. Robert Strong, a professor of political economy at Washington and Lee, replied by email: From a different vantage point, Ellen Fitzgerald, a professor of history at the University of New Hampshire, questioned the value of trying to determine 'whether Trump is the most corrupt and/or most destructive president in U.S. history.' Such evaluations Despite those cautions, Fitzpatrick acknowledged that 'it's fair to say that if we look at the arc of American history from Reconstruction to the current day, there's no question that Trump is busily destroying much of what several generations of Americans worked very, very hard to achieve.' 'The anti-immigrant sentiment of the late 19th and early twentieth century,' Fitzpatrick wrote, and 'the rhetoric abroad in the land today': Some of those I questioned argued that Trump's assault on American institutions and values is not supported by most of his voters. Russell Riley, professor of ethics and co-chairman of the Miller Center's Presidential Oral History Program, took this view a step farther, noting that Trump explicitly dissociated himself from Project 2025 during the campaign and then, once in office, adopted much of the Project 2025 agenda: Trump, in contrast, 'barely won the popular vote, with just under 50 percent — hardly an electoral mandate, even for an incremental program. Indeed as a candidate Mr. Trump openly distanced himself from Project 2025.' Lacking both a clear mandate and an electorate explicitly supportive of Project 2025, Riley argued, means The reality, however, is that the abdication of power by Republicans in Congress has allowed Trump to create a mandate out of whole cloth. Where will this frightening development take us? The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters@
The Independent
27-03-2025
- Health
- The Independent
RFK Jr is axing 10,000 employees at Health Department in dramatic restructuring
Department of Health and Human Services to ax 10,000 employees across several agencies as part of the White House's 'reduction in force' plan to downsize the federal government. The department oversees more than a dozen agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration. The layoffs, combined with another 10,000 employees who left voluntarily, will bring the department's total full-time staff from 82,000 down to 62,000 full-time employees, a cut of nearly 25 percent. The department will also close half iof ts regional offices. The restructuring plan will reduce the department's 28 divisions into just 15, the agency said in a statement Thursday. Kennedy, meanwhile, is adding a new Administration for a Healthy America. 'We will eliminate an entire alphabet soup of departments, while preserving their core functions by merging them into a new organization called the Administration for Healthy America or AHA,' Kennedy said on X. 'Over time, bureaucracies like HHS become wasteful and inefficient even when most of their staff are dedicated and competent civil servants,' Kennedy said. 'This overhaul will be a win-win for taxpayers and for those that HHS serves. That's the entire American public, because our goal is to Make America Healthy Again.' Morale was already the 'lowest it's ever been' at public health agencies, and this rapid downsizing could impact the services they provide, warned Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association 'I've done big reorganizations before,' Benjamin told CNN. 'You have to do them very, very carefully, very deliberately. Every time you move the boxes around, every time you downsize or upsize organizations, you make them dysfunctional for some period of time.' Experts say this will impact physicians and other healthcare providers across the country. 'Reductions in the federal workforce may seem more efficient, but it could result in more wasteful spending down the road,' Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, told CNN. 'New efforts to improve healthy behaviors may work at cross purposes to dramatic reductions in federal programs and big cuts to Medicaid being considered by Congress.' The 'work and expertise of HHS staff are critical to the well-being of our entire population — and to physicians' ability to provide care to patients,' Dr. Stella Dantas, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, told CNN. 'This attack on public health — and HHS' ability to advance it — will hurt people across the United States every single day,' she said. Democratic Senator Angela Alsobrooks called the cuts 'dangerous and deadly.' "These mass layoffs at Health and Human Services will cost human lives," she said. "I will do all I can to fight this."
