Trump, RFK Jr. Begin Mass Layoffs at Health Agencies

Good evening. Sen. Cory Booker just set the record for the longest speech in Senate history, holding the floor of the chamber for more that 24 hours in protest against Trump administration policies - policies like the purge of federal employees that continued today with sweeping cuts across the Department of Health and Human Services.

Trump, RFK Jr. Begin Mass Layoffs at Health Agencies

The U.S. Health and Human Services Department began to lay off thousands of workers Tuesday, part of a reorganization plan under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that will eliminate roughly 10,000 positions across the organization that oversees vast American health and science programs.

The layoffs touched on a wide range of areas and include people who work on new drug approvals, research treatments and track diseases, as well as workers writing health standards, developing new technologies, assisting Medicare and Medicaid patients and communicating with the public. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was particularly hard hit, with nearly 2,400 layoffs.

In addition to the layoffs, senior leaders at multiple agencies within HHS, including the National Institutes of Health, the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, were put on leave or reassigned. At the CDC, senior leaders overseeing global health issues, infectious diseases, chronic disease, HIV, sexually transmitted disease and outbreak forecasting were notified they were being transferred to the Indian Health Service, The Washington Post reports. Some leaders received letters offering reassignment to locations in Alaska, Montana or Oklahoma.

"The revolution begins today!" Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote on social media as he celebrated the swearing in of Dr. Martin Makary, the new head of the Food and Drug Administration, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the new head of the National Institutes of Health. Kennedy announced last week that he plans to cut 25% of the workforce at HHS, or about 20,000 workers, to save roughly $1.8 billion.

Scientific community reels: Scientists and experts in healthcare expressed shock at the depth and severity of the layoffs, with some expressing doubts about the federal government's ability to continue to fulfill key parts of its mission.

"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," Robert Califf, FDA commissioner under Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, wrote Tuesday morning. "I believe that history will see this as a huge mistake. I will be glad if I'm proven wrong, but even then there is no good reason to treat people this way. It will be interesting to hear from the new leadership how they plan to put 'Humpty Dumpty' back together again."

Scott Gottlieb, who ran the FDA during the first Trump administration, noted that the U.S. used to be a laggard in drug approvals compared to Europe. "Through a generation of congressional actions, investments in expertise and hiring, and careful policymaking, we built the FDA into the most efficient, forward-leaning drug regulatory agency in the world-and established the U.S. as the global center of biopharmaceutical innovation," he said on social media. "Today, the cumulative barrage on that drug-discovery enterprise, threatens to swiftly bring back those frustrating delays for American consumers, particularly affecting rare diseases and areas of significant unmet medical need."

Dr. Richard Besser, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said that HHS leaders were "systematically and cruelly dismantling" the U.S. public health system. "These are reckless, thoughtless cuts that will only make American communities less healthy and less safe," he said. "They represent an abdication of the department's essential responsibility to promote and protect health. And they present a fundamentally different vision of what government can and should do to improve people's lives. Americans deserve better."

Modest savings on offer: HHS accounts for roughly 25% of the federal budget. Kennedy recently called it "the biggest agency in government, twice the size of the Pentagon, $1.9 trillion dollars," overstating its size only slightly while calling for big cuts due to what he said were failures throughout the department. But Kennedy's staff reductions address only a tiny part of the HHS budget, with personnel costs accounting for less than 1% of the department's budget, according to a New York Times report.

Most of the money spent at HHS goes to Medicare and Medicaid, to provide healthcare to elderly and low-income Americans. Some critics say Kennedy is misleading the public by citing HHS's huge budget and they suggest that he seeks to drastically cut its research and advocacy capabilities, within the context of the Trump administration's war on "waste, fraud and abuse."

"It would leave someone with a super wrong understanding of what is going on really," Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, told the Times. "The only story of what's going on in HHS is that we have a huge increase in the elderly population."

Senators call on RFK Jr. to testify: On Tuesday, the chair of the Senate health committee, Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, called on Kennedy to testify about the reorganization of HHS, with a hearing scheduled on April 10. Cassidy, a medical doctor, provided a key vote to confirm Kennedy, but only after Kennedy provided reassurances about his plans for the department and his controversial views on vaccines and basic health science.

Protesting Trump, Booker Breaks Record for Longest Senate Speech

Democratic Sen. Cory Booker just set a new record for the longest speech in Senate history, breaking the mark set by Sen. Strom Thurmond, a South Carolina segregationist, who in 1957 spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes to filibuster a civil rights bill.

Booker broke the record at 7:19 p.m. and the moment was met with a round of loud applause from the gallery. He held the Senate floor for more than 24 ½ hours to protest President Donald Trump's agenda, including potential cuts to Medicaid and other healthcare issues as well as cuts to Social Security offices, proposed tax cuts and changes to immigration, education and foreign policy. "Are you better off than you were 72 days ago under this president's leadership, on the verge of his so-called 'Liberation Day' that's going to drive prices up even more?" Booker asked this afternoon.

He began his marathon speech on the Senate floor at 7 p.m. Monday night by explaining that he was disrupting the Senate's normal business because he believes that the country is in crisis. "The threats to the American people and American democracy are grave and urgent, and we all must do more to stand against them," he said.

Today he added: "This is not a partisan moment. It is a moral moment. Where do you stand?"

By Tuesday evening, some 22 hours into his remarks, Booker admitted he was tiring. "I don't have that much gas in the tank," he admitted at 5 p.m. before allowing a question from Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin. He paused repeatedly throughout his speech to take questions from fellow Democrats while making clear he was not yielding the floor.

Booker's speech was technically not a filibuster because it is not blocking debate over a specific bill or nominee. But the speech did delay until Wednesday a planned vote on a Democratic effort led by Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia to undo Trump's tariffs on Canada. Kaine told reporters he backed Booker's effort.

Speaker Mike Johnson suffers a defeat: Over in the House, meanwhile, nine Republicans joined with Democrats to hand Speaker Mike Johnson an extraordinary defeat in his aggressive effort to block proxy voting for lawmakers who are parents of newborns.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican who has led the push for proxy voting, forced the issue by collecting 218 signatures on a discharge petition requiring the House to consider her measure.

Johnson and Republican leaders have vehemently opposed proxy voting, arguing it is unconstitutional, and they went to unprecedented lengths to try to prevent a vote on the issue. After his effort was thwarted Tuesday, Johnson canceled votes for the rest of the week.

"Under House rules, Republican leaders are required to bring the proxy voting resolution to a vote within two legislative days," The New York Times notes. "But they appeared to be refusing to do anything else until the holdouts in their party cave, which they have shown no sign of doing. As Republicans left Washington for the week having passed no bills, it was not clear how or when the issue would be resolved."

Johnson and GOP leaders are reportedly looking to ratchet up their fight next week and add to the pressure on Republican members by forcing lawmakers to choose between proxy voting and the budget plan needed to pass Trump's legislative agenda.

Fiscal News Roundup

• 'It's a Bloodbath': Massive Wave of Job Cuts Underway at US Health Agencies – CNN
• Federal Health Workers Make Up Under 1% of the Agency's Spending – New York Times
• The Federal Work Force Cuts So Far, Agency by Agency – New York Times
• Chuck Schumer Says He's Taking the Fight Over Federal Spending to Trump Country – Associated Press
• Senate GOP Leaders Vow to Plow Ahead With Budget Votes – Politico
• Republicans Might Skip Senate Ruling on Controversial Accounting Tactic – Politico
• House GOP Leaders Ready to Muscle Senate Budget to Final Approval – Politico
• Trump Says He's Settled on a Tariff Plan That Is Set to Take Effect Wednesday – New York Times
• What to Know About Tariffs as Trump's Trade War Intensifies – New York Times
• 'Nowhere to Absorb It': From Consumer Small Business to Big Food, the Trump Tariff Cost Warnings Mount – CNBC
• Trump's Tariffs to Take Immediate Effect, White House Says – Bloomberg
• Thune Urging GOP Colleagues to Kill Resolution to Undo Trump Tariffs – The Hill
• Trump Urges Senate Republicans to Reject Protest Vote on Tariffs – Reuters
• 'I Don't Know Anyone That Isn't Pissed Off at Him': Trump World Turns on Lutnick – Politico
• Trump Hints That Musk and DOGE May Be Coming to the End of the Road – Politico
• Republicans Eye $25,000 SALT Cap as Trump's Tax Cuts Take Shape – Bloomberg
• Trump Guts Small Federal Agency Funding Museums and Libraries – Politico
• Millions of Women Will Lose Access to Contraception as a Result of Trump Aid Cuts – New York Times
• US Chip Grants in Limbo as Lutnick Pushes Bigger Investments – Bloomberg
• Supreme Court Weighs Whether States Can Cut Off Medicaid Funding to Planned Parenthood – Associated Press

Views and Analysis

• Trump's Tariffs Set to Make History and Break a System MAGA Loathes – Shawn Donnan, Enda Curran and Maeva Cousin, Bloomberg
• Trump's 'Liberation Day' Tariffs Are Coming, but at a Cost to U.S. Alliances – David E. Sanger, New York Times
• Trump Doesn't Seem to Understand How Car Prices Work – Chris Isidore, CNN
• A $6 Trillion Trump Tax Increase? – Wall Street Journal Editorial Board
• Reciprocal Tariffs? We've Seen This Movie Before – Jonathan Levin, Bloomberg
• Another 'Shock' Is Coming for American Jobs – Heather Long, Washington Post
• When Presidents Ask Americans to Suffer for the Cause, Voters Make Them Pay for It – Jeff Greenfield, Politico
• The White House's Mixed Message on Its Tariff Policy – Mick Mulvaney, The Hill
• Congress' War on Math – Lawrence H. Summers, Bobby Kogan and Emily Gee, Center for American Progress
• Big Pharma Should Be Worried About Who RFK Jr. Fires Next – Lisa Jarvis, Bloomberg
• Only Career Civil Servants Know Where the Real Government Waste Is – Ronald Sanders, The Hill
• Can the Democrats Reclaim Economic Populism? – Robert Kuttner and David Dayen, American Prospect
• Trump Says He'll Stop Health Care Fraudsters. Last Time, He Let Them Walk – Brett Kelman, KFF Health News
• Why Trump Is Right About Ending the Debt Ceiling – Steve Forbes, Forbes
• The Last Abundance Agenda – David Dayen, American Prospect
• Ten Weeks That Shook the World – Edward Luce, Financial Times