The Department of Health and Human Services, under President Donald Trump and Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., swiftly un-fired a large number of people dismissed as part of sweeping agency cuts, CBS News reported, including health care workers for victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
This follows a number of similar cases of the Trump administration realizing it needed to reverse staffing cuts made to critical agencies, including an incident in which nuclear weapons security experts had to be rehired.
However, the report noted, these notices sent to affected workers "went a step further from some previous reinstatements touted by department officials, which often amounted only to a request for civil servants to continue working for a few more weeks to wind down or prepare to hand off their assignments."
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The letters, sent to some people who worked at the World Trade Center Health Program, stated, "You previously received a notice regarding the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) upcoming reduction in force (RIF). That notice is hereby revoked."
Also rehired were some FDA laboratory officials in Chicago and San Francisco, although so-called "probationary workers" who have not been in their current positions long enough to receive full civil service protections were not included, and food safety officials working at labs in Puerto Rico and Detroit have not been rehired either.
Amidst criticism of the cutbacks, Kennedy had appeared on Fox News on Monday and said, "Those programs were not terminated, as the media has reported. But they've simply been consolidated into a place that makes more sense."
The Tuesday messages un-firing several HHS workers "comes days after the department laid off hundreds more employees at the National Institutes of Health, blindsiding staff who had survived the initial wave of cuts in April," noted the report.
Those dismissals "included staff at the National Cancer Institute, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Library of Medicine and Office of Research Facilities ... NIH employees were told that the additional cuts were prompted by a need to reinstate scientists while also meeting strict layoff quotas sought by the department."
