A deal for TikTok seemingly falls hostage to the US-China trade war

(WASHINGTON) — Employees at the Department of Health and Human Services began to receive notices of mass layoffs on Tuesday, days after HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that 10,000 people would lose their jobs, including employees working on tobacco use, mental health and workplace safety.

The layoffs are expected to impact 3,500 employees at the Food and Drug Administration and 2,400 employees from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — nearly one-fifth of the workforce at both public health divisions, which fall under HHS.

In total, and including roughly 10,000 people who have left over the last few months through early retirement or deferred resignation programs, the overall staff at HHS will fall from 82,000 to around 62,000 — or about a fourth of its workforce.

The sweeping changes drew criticism from Robert Califf, who served two stints as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.

“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,” Califf wrote on LinkedIn on Tuesday.

“I believe that history will see this as a huge mistake,” he added. “I will be glad if I’m proven wrong, but even then there is no good reason to treat people this way.”

The layoffs also prompted a bipartisan request from the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions for Kennedy to testify about the changes at a hearing next week, titled “An Update on the Restructuring of the Department of Health and Human Services.”

Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., the committee chairman, and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., a ranking member, penned a letter to Kennedy on Tuesday as thousands of HHS workers were learning they had lost their jobs.

“We are following up on the commitment you made during the confirmation process that as Secretary you would come before the HELP Committee on a quarterly basis, upon request of the Chair,” Cassidy and Sanders wrote.

Cassidy, a physician who voiced grave concerns with Kennedy’s anti-vaccine rhetoric during his confirmation hearings, was a key vote in advancing Kennedy’s nomination to the Senate floor earlier this year — but did so on the condition that Kennedy would not make major changes to certain policies and would consult Cassidy regularly on his decisions.

As news of the cuts spread, employees stood in long lines outside of their offices in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Georgia, some waiting for hours as security determined whether they could be let in the building or not. In some cases, employees were turned around after being informed that they no longer had a job.

Kevin Caron, a health scientist within the Office on Smoking and Health at the CDC, said the majority of the office was laid off on Tuesday, including his own role in the branch that focused on epidemiology.

The timing is particularly stressful, he said, because his wife is 38 weeks pregnant with the couple’s first child — a girl — and he’ll no longer be able to take the 12 weeks of paternity leave he was approved to take beginning in April.

“It’s absolutely a loss in security, financial security, the ability to be around and be a parent, because I need to look for another job,” Caron said.

The Office on Smoking and Health is described on CDC’s website as “the lead federal agency for comprehensive tobacco prevention and control.” The office distributes money to every U.S. state to prevent and reduce smoking, vaping and using nicotine products, especially among young people.

The office sits within the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion at the CDC, which has been hard hit by layoffs at other divisions, too, multiple officials tell ABC News — a surprise to many, given Kennedy’s commitment to ending chronic disease.

“Tobacco is the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. It’s a serious producer of chronic disease. And so I’m kind of shocked that even though that’s a stated priority, that they would get rid of that kind of work,” Caron said.

At the FDA, tobacco work was also heavily impacted — including the firing of top tobacco regulator Brian King, who had worked to decrease the rates of e-cigarette use by teens.

The impact on tobacco across HHS comes after President Donald Trump as a candidate pledged to “save vaping” and reverse efforts to ban it.

Mitch Zeller, King’s predecessor at the Center for Tobacco Products, told ABC News he learned of King’s exit via conversations with people within the FDA. Zeller said that King was given the option to relocate to a remote western office of the Indian Health Service.

Zeller said that two key offices in the center were “completely rift.”

“If you kneecap the operational function of the center as well as the ability of the center to do forward-looking policy, you’ve really just eviscerated the center and its ability to fulfill its public health mission,” he said.

King did not respond to a request for comment.

Jeff Nesbit, a former FDA official who was instrumental in the FDA’s efforts to begin regulating tobacco, said the cuts will “substantially help the tobacco companies maintain the status quo.”

“These staff cuts to FDA’s tobacco center will allow the industry to continue to sell deadly burned cigarettes for many more years than they would have otherwise; while continuing to talk in vague, general terms about whether vaping and e-cigarettes might some day replace burned cigarettes,” said Nesbit, who was also a senior HHS official under former President Joe Biden.

At the agency that focuses on drug use and mental health, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), an entire team overseeing a nationwide survey that has been in use since 1971 was cut, Jennifer Hoenig, director of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, wrote on LinkedIn.

“We are the only national survey focusing specifically on drug use and mental health,” Hoenig wrote.

The office was also working on research about illegally made fentanyl and mental health treatment access, she said.

“I don’t know who will continue on with this work, or if it will,” she said, because so many staff across SAMHSA had been let go.

At a federal office that researches workplace safety, including for firefighters, mine workers, retail workers, truck drivers and factory workers, roughly 90% of the workforce was expected to be laid off, the director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health said on a call with leadership on Monday, a source familiar with the situation said.

NIOSH’s research investigates and researches workplace issues that inform the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, an agency under the Department of Labor that enforces workplace safety and health.

“It does look like the majority or much of the agency is going to be wiped out,” said David Michaels, who led OSHA from 2009 to 2017 and is a professor at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. Michaels said he’d been speaking with many employees at both NIOSH and OSHA.

“It makes OSHA’s job tremendously more difficult if the research of NIOSH disappears,” Michaels said. “There’ll be fewer and less protective standards coming out of OSHA.”

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(WASHINGTON) — One day after the Department of Veterans Affairs celebrated an estimated $2 billion in savings on canceled contracts, the agency began reversing some of the cancellations that may have affected veterans’ medical care and other benefits, according to multiple sources familiar with the contracts and agency records reviewed by ABC News.

“We were taking in millions of dollars in contracts to create things like PowerPoint slides and meeting minutes,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said on Tuesday. “Millions of dollars in contracts for ‘coaching and training.'”

“Don’t feed the line of what D.C. is wanting to sell you,” he added. “We are putting money back to veterans’ health, back to veterans’ benefits. And don’t let nameless sources, even senators and House members, who want to scare you, and the media, who want to perpetuate the line. We’re taking care of veterans.”

But the hundreds of contracts set for cancellation included some for legally required technical inspections of medical equipment that produce radiation at VA facilities, including CT scanners, MRI machines and dental X-ray units.

Without annual inspections, some of which are conducted by contractors in part to save the agency money, VA staffers are not permitted to use the equipment.

“We’re a really good deal for them,” said one contractor with multiple agency contracts, including several that were initially canceled — and then reversed by Wednesday afternoon. “They can’t afford to have that done in-house.”

Canceling the contracts “100% will impact care,” a VA official told ABC News. “If [the machines] get serviced or a part is replaced, they need to be inspected as well.”

Asked for comment Tuesday, a VA spokesperson told ABC News, “We’re reviewing VA’s various contracts, and we will be canceling many focusing on non-mission critical things like PowerPoint slides, executive support and coaching. Our review is ongoing and not final.”

“We will not be eliminating any benefits or services to veterans or VA beneficiaries, and there will be no negative impact to VA healthcare, benefits or beneficiaries,” the spokesperson added. “We are always going to take care of veterans at VA. Period.”

Some of the contracts marked for termination on Monday included contracts to provide employee and workplace benefits services to tens of thousands of VA employees and their families. Others included work overseeing hazardous waste disposal, conducting safety inspections at VA medical facilities, supporting cancer programs and burial services, according to agency records review by ABC News.

Some of the contracts marked for termination on Monday included contracts to provide employee and workplace benefits services to tens of thousands of VA employees and their families. Others included work overseeing hazardous waste disposal and conducting safety inspections at VA medical facilities.

Many of these contracts are labeled as some variations of consulting, a sweeping category of federal contracts that the Department of Government Efficiency’s team has aggressively gone after as part of its efforts to cut wasteful government spending.

“Everyone can agree that there is waste, likely fat, and there may very well be some fraud,” Arthur Mabbett, a disabled veteran and CEO of Mabbett & Associates, a government contractor with dozens of contracts with the VA and other agencies, told ABC News.

“Doing it in a businesslike fashion, rather than pure chaos, which is what they’re doing right now, would be a better approach,” said Mabbett, whose company has not had its stop-work orders rescinded as of Wednesday evening.

Some of that work includes working with VA facilities to make sure expansion and renovation projects comply with federal environmental law.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., on Tuesday slammed Collins’ previous move to cancel the contracts, saying many of those contracts provide “critical and direct services” to veterans.

“To say abruptly cancelling these services won’t impact veterans’ care and benefits is another unrealistic promise from Collins,” Blumenthal wrote in a statement. “Make no mistake — this is just another reckless cost-cutting decision that will harm veterans and taxpayers for years to come.”

Agency leaders directed employees to begin terminating hundreds of contracts on Monday, with some stop-work orders issued that evening.

Already, some of those stop-work orders have been rescinded — one of several DOGE-led efforts across the federal government that have been slowed or partially reversed by various agency leaders.

“I like what they’re doing, I just think they made a mistake, and they need to fix it,” one contractor told ABC News about the overall DOGE efforts. “If it goes quickly, I’ll be happy. And if it takes three to four months, I won’t be.”

The VA has already gone through two rounds of layoffs: The first affected 1,000 workers, and the second, announced this week, affected 1,400 “non-mission critical positions,” according to the agency’s statement.

Some of those terminated employees were asked to return to work days later, workers told ABC News.

Other layoffs may be on the horizon. On Wednesday, the Trump administration directed agencies to begin preparing for “large-scale” layoffs and reorganizations and to present plans for doing so to the Office of Management and Budget by March 13, according to a memo obtained by ABC News.

-ABC News’ Soorin Kim and Nathan Luna contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — Danielle Sassoon, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, submitted her resignation Thursday, according to a source familiar with the move. Multiple members of the office where the case was to be reassigned have resigned as well.

Sassoon sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi informing her of her decision to resign.

Sassoon’s resignation followed days of tension between the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan and leaders in the Justice Department over the bribery and campaign finance case against Mayor Eric Adams.

On Jan. 31, Sassoon was drawn into a conversation at DOJ headquarters in Washington about the future of the case. The meeting included the mayor’s defense attorney, Alex Spiro.

On Monday, acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove sent a memo that told Sassoon, “You are directed, as authorized by the Attorney General, to dismiss the pending charges in United States v. Adams.”

To date, the office has not filed a motion to dismiss with the court.

The failure to immediately heed the directive irked DOJ leadership, including Bove and Bondi.

“That case should be dropped. It was dead at the directive of Emil so that case should be dropped,” Bondi told reporters on Wednesday.

The Justice Department planned to remove the prosecutors handling the mayor’s case and reassign it to the Public Integrity Section in Washington, D.C. However, as soon the Public Integrity Section was informed it would be taking over, John Keller, the acting head of the unit, and his boss, Kevin Driscoll, the senior most career official in the criminal division resigned, according to multiple sources.

It is now unclear who will take over the Adams case and how soon it might be dropped, the sources said.

Adams had pleaded not guilty to a five-count indictment that accused him of accepting years of luxury travel gifts in exchange for, among other things, persuading the fire department to approve the opening of the new Turkish consulate in Manhattan despite the lingering safety concerns of inspectors.

In a letter to the Southern District of New York on Monday, Bove questioned the timing of when the charges were brought, suggesting the case was part of the Biden administration’s weaponization of the Justice Department, according to sources at the time.

Bove also said the case adversely affected Adams’ ability to help the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, the sources added.

Federal prosecutors were instructed to dismiss the case without prejudice, meaning it could come up again. However, Bove wrote nothing could happen until after this year’s mayoral election.

Despite that threat, Spiro expressed confidence Adams would not be prosecuted.

“There is no looming threat,” Spiro said at a press conference Wednesday. “This case is over.”

Any motion to dismiss the case would have to be formally filed in court and reviewed by the judge.

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