(WASHINGTON) — The Department of Health and Human Services confirmed on Thursday that about 10,000 full-time employees will soon lose their jobs, on top of the nearly 10,000 who have already left the agency in the last few months through buyout offers or early retirements.
That puts the total employees at around 62,000 people — down from 82,000 at the start of the Trump administration. The agency oversees the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — among other divisions.
“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,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said in a statement on Thursday.
“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,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy claimed the latest cuts will save taxpayers $1.8 billion per year. The cuts will reduce the number of regional offices — from 10 down to five. It will also combine the current 28 divisions at HHS into 15 divisions, including a new one focused on Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement, to be named the Administration for a Healthy America.
“We’re going to eliminate an entire alphabet soup of departments and agencies, while preserving their core functions by merging them into a new organization called the Administration for a Healthy America,” Kennedy said in a video out Thursday explaining the cuts.
Despite cutting nearly one-quarter of the agency, the department maintains that the restructuring won’t impact “critical services.”
The real-world impact of the newest round of cuts, however, remains to be seen. Already, cuts have hit top researchers at the National Institute of Health’s Alzheimer’s research center and disease detectives who identify new infectious diseases.
ABC News’ Will McDuffie contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — As Kash Patel, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, appears Thursday for his Senate confirmation hearing, some of the rhetoric he has espoused for years to defend Trump and promote Trump’s reelection is sure to elicit sharp questions about whether he is fit to lead one of the nation’s premiere law enforcement agencies.
Patel has derided the FBI as the “Federal Bureau of Insanity.” He’s announced “a mission to annihilate the ‘Deep State'” — what he calls a “cabal of unelected tyrants” inside government, undermining Trump. He’s said the conspiracy theory QAnon, claiming a secret global plot to traffic children and take down Trump, is right in many ways and “should get credit for all the things” it has accomplished. And he once promised to “come after” and prosecute “the conspirators not just in government, but in the media” who “helped Joe Biden rig the presidential election.”
On a podcast two years ago, Trump adviser Roger Stone told Patel his critics are right about one thing: “You are a Trump loyalist.”
Patel chuckled and nodded affirmatively.
But that’s just what Democrats — and even some Republicans — on the Senate Judiciary Committee may wonder about most: If confirmed, is Patel so loyal to Trump that he would use the FBI to push Trump’s political agenda and target Trump’s perceived enemies?
‘An existential threat’
According to Patel, the FBI has already become a political weapon — especially with its multiple investigations of Trump, including the unprecedented search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022 — and that’s what he wants to change.
“The rot at the core of the FBI isn’t just scandalous, it’s an existential threat to our republican form of government,” Patel wrote in his book, published two years ago, titled “Government Gangsters.”
Trump, on social media, called Patel’s book “the roadmap to end the Deep State’s reign” when it came out.
Many of Trump’s allies in Congress have lauded Patel’s nomination, touting him as the change agent needed at the top of an embattled agency. Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has called Patel’s career “a study in fighting for unpopular but righteous causes, exposing corruption, and putting America First.”
Democrats, however, not only point to what they see as Patel’s concerning rhetoric — but also what they’ve described as his relative lack of experience for such a significant position.
After meeting with Patel last week, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said he has “grave concerns” about Patel’s nomination, declaring, “Mr. Patel has neither the experience, the temperament, nor the judgment to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
‘I just got to my breaking point’
Now in his mid-40s, Patel grew up on New York’s Long Island, ultimately deciding to attend law school after caddying for a group of criminal defense attorneys at the Garden City County Club. By his own account, in 2005, he graduated from Pace University Law school in the bottom third of his class — something he was “very proud of,” he once joked.
After law school, he spent nine years as a public defender, and in late 2013 he moved to Washington, D.C., to join the Justice Department’s National Security Division as a terrorism prosecutor, helping U.S. attorneys’ offices around the country prosecute their cases.
He was involved in Justice Department cases all over the world, including ones stemming from the 2012 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi and the 2010 World Cup bombings in Uganda.
But in his book and in media interviews, he said he grew frustrated with his time at the Justice Department, especially after a dust-up with a federal judge that made national headlines.
In early 2016, while Patel was in Tajikistan for work, the judge presiding over one of his cases in Texas called for an in-person hearing back in the United States. Patel didn’t have a suit or tie with him in Tajikistan, and after racing halfway around the world to make the hearing, the judge badgered him to “dress like a lawyer” and “act like a lawyer,” according to a transcript of the exchange.
“You don’t add a bit of value, do you?” the judge added.
As Patel recounted in his book, his bosses at the Justice Department privately expressed support for him, but when the Washington Post wrote a story about it two weeks later, the Justice Department, in Patel’s telling, refused to defend him publicly, so the newspaper “dragged my name through the mud.”
Patel has also described how he grew upset over the Justice Department’s handling of the Benghazi case following the 2012 attack by Islamic militants, believing that “terrorists went free” despite his disputed assertion that the Obama administration had enough evidence to charge even more people for the attack.
“I just got to my breaking point,” Patel once recalled. So in 2017, he left the Justice Department to become a senior investigator on Capitol Hill, where he helped lead the House Republicans’ probe of “Russiagate” — which, as he describes it, exposed FBI wrongdoing in its 2016 investigation of alleged ties between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia.
‘Not a credible witness’
Patel’s work on the Russia probe led to him joining the Trump administration in 2019, and in the final year of Trump’s presidency he was appointed acting deputy director of national intelligence — the second-in-command of the entire U.S. intelligence community — and then chief of staff to the acting U.S. defense secretary, a position that critics claimed he was unqualified to hold even for just the 10 weeks he was there.
After Trump’s first administration ended, Patel regularly appeared on conservative media outlets, frequently praising Trump and criticizing the Justice Department for investigating and then prosecuting Trump for his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving office and his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Patel has claimed — despite the Justice Department’s inspector general finding otherwise — that the FBI played a part in pushing pro-Trump protesters to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. And he has claimed in media interviews and court testimony that Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi deserve blame for the attack — not Trump — because, Patel insists, Trump days earlier had authorized up to 20,000 National Guard to secure the Capitol.
The judge who listened to his court testimony in a case about Trump’s eligibility to be on Colorado’s ballot in the November election ruled that Patel “was not a credible witness,” saying his testimony was “not only illogical” but “completely devoid of any evidence in the record.”
After Trump left office, Patel launched a tax-exempt charity, now known as the Kash Foundation, which made national headlines in 2023 with revelations that it provided thousands of dollars to at least two so-called “FBI whistleblowers” who helped House Republicans push disputed claims of corruption inside the Justice Department.
Patel has said his charity helps fund defamation lawsuits, supports whistleblowers, buys meals for families in need over Christmas, supports Jan. 6 families, and more recently funds “rescue operations” out of Israel.
But he has refused to offer specifics about who is benefiting from his charity, and, as ABC News previously reported, experts have questioned whether it was following the law. At the time, Patel declined to speak with ABC News about its reporting.
After Trump announced his latest presidential campaign, Patel traveled the country to promote Trump’s reelection, saying that Trump would fire “thousands and thousands and thousands” of government employees to root out the “Deep State.”
Three weeks after Trump was reelected president, he named Patel as his pick to lead the FBI.
Kent Nishimura for The Washington Post via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — An investigation is just beginning into the fatal plane crash over the Potomac River in Washington, with no cause determined yet by the National Transportation Safety Board.
President Donald Trump, though, was quick to try to assign blame on Thursday as he gave a press conference at the White House while recovery crews navigated the icy waters searching for victims.
“We do not know what led to this crash, but we have some very strong opinions,” he said.
Trump first claimed, without evidence, that diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives under Democratic presidents could be a factor. He later doubled down on the unsubstantiated claim while he signed executive orders in the Oval Office.
Trump also suggested the helicopter pilots navigating the U.S. Army Black Hawk should have moved out of the way but at one point said warnings to the crew were given “very late.”
On Friday, he continued to question the chopper’s movement as it appeared to be flying above the mandated 200 feet. “That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it???” he wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.
Leading the investigation into the crash is the NTSB, with a preliminary report due in 30 days but a final report on probable cause not likely for at least a year.
NTSB member Todd Inman, during an appearance on “Good Morning America” on Friday, said it is far too early to make a determination.
“The only conclusion I know is last night we met with several hundred family members who lost their loved ones in the Potomac,” he said. “We don’t need that to happen anymore. … We’re going to find out what happened, and we’re going to try to stop it from happening again.”
Trump accused former President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama of hiring air traffic controllers based on diversity goals.
“I put safety first — Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first, and they put politics at a level that nobody’s ever seen,” Trump claimed at Thursday’s news conference.
When pressed by ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce what proof he had that the crash was caused by DEI efforts, Trump responded: “It just could have been.”
DEI or any similar program does not apply to hiring for air traffic control, which requires rigorous health examinations and a multiyear training process. Applicants must pass a medical exam, an aptitude test and a psychological test that is more stringent than that required of a pilot, said Chris Wilbanks, FAA deputy vice president of safety and technical training.
Trump pointed to a New York Post article as he accused Democrats of pushing to hire people with severe mental disabilities at the Federal Aviation Administration. But the diversity language referenced in the article was on the FAA website during the entirety of Trump’s first term and has been on the site for more than a decade, according to Snopes.
Trump’s attacks, though, are in line with his agenda to dismantle DEI from the federal government. In his first week in office, he signed multiple orders to place federal employees working on DEI on administrative leave and to remove DEI efforts from the Pentagon.
Democrats pushed back on Trump’s claims about the crash.
“Listen, it’s one thing for internet pundits to spew off conspiracy theories. It’s another for the president of the United States to throw out idle speculation as bodies are still being recovered and families still being notified,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on Thursday. “It just turns your stomach.”
Pete Buttigieg, Biden’s transportation secretary and another target of Trump’s criticism in the wake of the crash, called Trump’s comments “despicable.”
“President Trump now oversees the military and the FAA,” Buttigieg wrote in a social media post. “One of his first acts was to fire and suspend some of the key personnel who helped keep our skies safe. Time for the President to show actual leadership and explain what he will do to prevent this from happening again.”
ABC News’ Selina Wang, Benjamin Siegel, Sam Sweeney, Fritz Farrow and Hannah Demissie contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Pete Marocco, the Trump administration official tasked with the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), at a private “listening session” held at the State Department earlier this month with dozens of aid groups — some on the brink of financial collapse — opened the proceedings by making one request: that everyone stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.
Inside the Loy Henderson Conference Room, representatives from aid organizations, industry groups, and foreign embassies — reeling from the administration’s sweeping freeze on foreign aid and the unraveling of USAID — dutifully rose to their feet.
The aid groups were there in the hope that Marocco would provide answers on the future of foreign assistance. After the Pledge, Marocco outlined the Trump administration’s foreign aid plans, defending what he called a “total zero-based review,” and arguing that some areas of foreign aid required “radical change” before taking questions from those in attendance, according to an audio recording of the private meeting obtained by ABC News.
‘Nefarious actors in the agencies’
Multiple sources who attended the Feb. 13 meeting described the mood in the room as “deeply uncomfortable,” saying that some of the attendees who were representing groups teetering on bankruptcy were left “traumatized” by the tone and the lack of specific details.
During the discussion, a representative for World Vision, a global Christian humanitarian organization, asked Marocco about the impact of the freeze, noting that aid groups like his had been forced to bankroll U.S. government-funded programs with private money while awaiting overdue payments to be unpaused.
“Will the spigot open? We’ve gotten waivers, but the PMS system isn’t operating, so we’re bankrolling U.S. government-funded programs out of private money,” said Edward Brown, the vice president of World Vision, which provides poverty alleviation, disaster relief, and child welfare in nearly 100 countries.
Marocco responded that following President Donald Trump’s executive order halting foreign aid, some transactions were still being processed, prompting his team to “seize control” of the payment system to stop them — leaving some groups without payments that, weeks later, had still had not arrived.
“As far as payment, one of the reasons that there have been problems with some of the payments is because, despite the president’s executive order, despite the secretary’s guidance, we still had nefarious actors in the agencies that were trying to push out hundreds of illegal payments,” Marocco said. “And so we were able to seize control of that, stop them, take control of some of those people, and make sure that that money was not getting out the door.”
Marocco suggested that payments for organizations with existing contracts would resume the following Tuesday.
“I feel confident we’re going to have that pretty good by Tuesday of next week,” he said. “That does not mean everybody’s going to be caught up on everything that they want. But I think that our payment system will probably be fluid at that point.”
But Tuesday came and went, and many groups say they were still on the edge of bankruptcy — prompting some to escalate their legal battle against the administration.
On Monday, several USAID officials told ABC News that the payment system Marocco said would be fully restored was now technically operational, but that funding was still moving at an extremely slow pace and that many of the programs that were granted waivers to continue operations had still not received any money.
USAID officials said the lack of funding has rendered many of the exempted programs inoperative. Some have resorted to using stockpiled resources, but because these programs have been cut off from federal support for weeks, most report that they have few funds left and don’t anticipate they will be able to function for much longer, according to the officials.
On Friday, after a federal judge cleared the way for the administration to proceed with its plan to pull thousands of USAID staffers off the job in the U.S. and around the world, the Trump administration moved forward with its effort to dismantle USAID, telling all but a fraction of staffers worldwide that they were on leave as of Monday.
In a court-ordered affidavit filed last Tuesday, Marocco wrote that the agency “has authorized at least 21 payments” for grants, loans, and other foreign aid executed before Trump’s inauguration “that are in total worth more than $250 million and are expected to be paid this week.”
As of Monday, it was not clear whether those payments had been made.
When reached for comment, World Vision would not confirm to ABC News if payments had resumed, but told ABC News they were “complying with the executive order that pauses U.S. foreign assistance funding — with potential waivers for emergency food and lifesaving humanitarian assistance — for the next 90 days, while programs are reviewed for alignment with the current administration’s foreign policy.”
‘What we consider to be legitimate’
In one tense moment during the listening session, a senior Democratic Senate staffer pressed Marocco on whether, once the payments resumed, they would include reimbursements for work incurred before the Jan. 24 freeze.
“When payments resume, will they include work incurred before Jan. 24 in the payments forthcoming on Tuesday?” asked the staffer, who, when reached for comment by ABC News, asked not to be named our of fear of retribution.
Marocco would not guarantee that government-contracted work that occurred before the freeze would be reimbursed, stating that the Trump administration would only cover “legitimate expenses” — and noting that the administration’s definition of a legitimate expense may differ from the groups in the room.
“We will be looking at those,” Marocco said. “What we consider to be legitimate may not be the same thing that other people consider to be legitimate, but we’re going to.”
The staffer attempted to follow up, arguing that if the work had been incurred before the freeze, “it was legitimate at the time, right?”
“We’ve moved on to the next person,” Marocco responded.
In his affidavit filed on Tuesday, Marocco conveyed the scope and status of the government’s aid freeze. He wrote that, since Trump signed the executive order for a 90-day freeze, USAID had terminated nearly 500 grants and contracts. He said the agency “has not quantified” the total cost of those programs.
As of Tuesday, the State Department had terminated more than 750 foreign assistance-funded grants and contracts of its own and had suspended nearly 7,000 more, Marocco wrote.
A ‘cycle of dependency’
Marocco used the meeting with the organizations to paint a dire picture of U.S. foreign aid, claiming it had “devolved into a fiscal cycle of dependency, of presumption, arrogance, and frankly, folly, that is just astonishing.” He dismissed past reform efforts as ineffective, arguing that officials had merely “nibbled around the edges” rather than addressing what he saw as systemic failures.
He insisted the review was necessary to force difficult conversations about “what these programs are actually doing” and whether they should continue at all. And he framed the overhaul as part of President Trump’s broader effort to reshape Washington’s approach to foreign assistance.
“The American people deserve better. They require better. And President Trump has promised better,” he said, criticizing aid decisions made “behind closed doors in Congress, in small groups in Washington, D.C.”
Marocco told those gathered that the administration’s review extended beyond USAID and would encompass a range of federal agencies, including NASA, the Patent and Trademark Office, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), and the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM).
“If there is a tax dollar that is going out to a foreigner, we need to gain control of that and understand what it is we’re trying to achieve with our partners,” he said. “We want to identify all of that. We want to fix it. That’s the goal.”
Marocco made clear that the new foreign aid structure would be tied to Trump’s political priorities.
“With the Secretary of State, you will be in line,” Marocco said. “The foreign assistance review, you will follow the president’s foreign policy objectives. Or you will not be spending money abroad.”
He told the aid groups in the room they needed to justify their programs.
“You need to think about convincing someone — perhaps one of the women who is in my mother’s Bible study,” he said. “You need to think about somebody who’s working at a McDonald’s in Mississippi. You need to think about a grad student in Harlem.”
The Trump administration has received widespread condemnation from Democrats in Congress over its effort to slash foreign aid programs. “What Trump and Musk have done is not only wrong, it’s illegal,” Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia said earlier this month during a news conference outside USAID headquarters. “USAID was established by an act of Congress, and it can only be disbanded by an act of Congress. Stopping this will require action by the courts and for Republicans to show up and show courage and stand up for our country.”
‘Catastrophic’ harm
The Feb. 13 meeting came as the legal battle over the aid freeze was escalating. Last week, a coalition of aid groups asked a federal judge to intervene, arguing that the freeze violated existing funding agreements and had caused “catastrophic” harm to their humanitarian missions. U.S. District Judge Amir Ali issued a temporary restraining order halting the freeze, but aid organizations said their funding remained locked, leaving them scrambling to keep operations afloat.
Late Tuesday, Trump administration attorneys filed court papers arguing that their interpretation of the judge’s order allows the freeze to largely remain in place. The aid groups fired back Wednesday, urging the court to enforce the ruling.
“The court should not brook such brazen defiance of the express terms of its order,” they wrote in the filing.
Judge Ali, a Biden-era appointee, wrote Thursday that while Trump administration officials had “not complied” with his order, he would not hold them in contempt of court.
But he warned those officials not to buck what he characterized as his “clear” directive to lift their “blanket freeze” on aid disbursements.
