An unknown number of federal health employees received termination notifications Friday afternoon as part of a mass reduction in force by the Trump administration that senior officials and federal employment lawyers say is almost certainly illegal.
The Department of Health and Human Services has taken heavy hits since Trump came to office. Early in the year, the Trump administration pushed out 10,000 employees through early retirements, deferred resignations, and other efforts while laying off 10,000 more, slashing the HHS workforce from 82,000 to 62,000 in all. In the current government shutdown—which hinges on a dispute over Affordable Care Act tax credits that 80 percent of Americans support—more than 32,000 HHS employees are furloughed.
In an emailed statement to Ars Technica, HHS Communications Director Andrew Nixon said that HHS employees "across multiple divisions" have received termination notices.
HHS did not respond to questions asking about the number of employees being terminated or their agencies. But Nixon said that "all HHS employees receiving reduction-in-force notices were designated non-essential by their respective divisions."
Nixon's statement said the terminations are "a direct consequence of the Democrat-led government shutdown." In the funding dispute that led to the shutdown, Democrats are pushing for an extension of the popular ACA tax credits that are otherwise set to expire at the end of the year. Nixon also blamed the Biden administration for turning HHS into a "bloated bureaucracy, growing its budget by 38 percent and its workforce by 17 percent."