The Party That Says Destroying Lives Is Fun
‘NO JOKING MATTER!’ The anti-vaxxer is unveiling plans to get his HHS staff down by a quarter.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he was “having fun” on the same day he announced the Department of Health and Human Services would cut 10,000 jobs.
The remark came as health workers across the country were reeling from the shock of learning that they could be losing their livelihoods.
In a video announcing the job losses, Kennedy said there would be a “painful period” ahead and slammed the department he runs as a “sprawling bureaucracy.”
“I want to promise you now that we’re going to do more with less,” he said.
However, when Kennedy met podcaster Drew Pinsky, known as “Dr Drew,” in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, he seemed to be in good spirits.
Pinsky was one of a group of podcasters invited to the White House by President Donald Trump. Later, he broadcast live from the Capitol and told his guest, right-wing commentator Jack Posobiec, that he had met Kennedy.
Pinsky said he asked how Kennedy was doing after he “pulled him aside.”
“He said one thing to me that made me enthusiastic,” the podcast host added.
He said Kennedy told him: “I’m having fun.”
“That’s what I wanted to hear,” Pinsky said.
The Associated Press reported that federal health workers reacted with shock and anxiety across the country after learning the news. They said they had not been given any notice of the cuts.
The HHS anticipates the move will save $1.8 billion per year but didn’t provide a breakdown.
“We’re all pretty devastated,” one employee at the National Institutes of Health said. “We don’t know what this means for public health.”
The planned changes include axing full-time employees across departments in charge of responding to disease outbreaks, approving new drugs, and providing insurance for the poorest Americans, among others.
The reduction is in addition to the roughly 10,000 employees who opted to quit the department through voluntary resignation offers since President Donald Trump took office. This brings down the total number of full-time employees from 82,000 to 62,000.
HHS is also apparently poised to slash even more of its workforce past the thousands mentioned in the Thursday announcement.
Although health agencies within HHS, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration, are typically independent from the White House and the health secretary, things might be different under Kennedy.
Trump’s health secretary is establishing a new subdivision called the Administration for a Healthy America (AHA) as part of the new reorganization that will merge offices in HHS that tackle addiction, toxic substances, and occupational safety, among others. The newly created central office will focus on chronic disease prevention programs and health resources for low-income Americans.
“We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy said in a statement. “This Department will do more—a lot more—at a lower cost to the taxpayer.”
In a video posted to X on Thursday morning, said the new AHA will “eliminate an entire alphabet soup of departments and agencies while preserving their core functions by merging them.”
Through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Trump administration’s layoff plans for the 10,000 federal workers break down into 3,500 from the FDA, 2,400 from the CDC, 1,200 from the NIH, and 300 from CMS, despite ongoing lawsuits, The Wall Street Journal reported.
