The Department of Health and Human Services announced it’s cutting 10,000 jobs. Combined with the wave of early retirements and buyouts since Trump came to power, the department will lose roughly a quarter of its workforce, going from 82,000 down to 62,000 employees. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said agencies will also be consolidated as part of the plan. The cuts will gut key agencies, including the CDC, FDA and NIH, and set back decades of advances in public health. Washington Democratic Senator Patty Murray said, “In the middle of worsening nationwide outbreaks of bird flu and measles, not to mention a fentanyl epidemic, Trump is wrecking vital health agencies with the precision of a bull in a china shop.” This comes as a leaked White House memo shows the Trump administration is preparing to lay off between 8% to 50% of federal workers across 22 agencies under the “first phase” of DOGE cuts. The plan includes axing half the staff at Housing and Urban Development, 30% of staff at the IRS and 8% of Justice Department staff.