HHS begins laying off 10,000 employees

• HHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

State of play: HHS has cut the entire team working on the National Survey on Drug Use and Health at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, said Jennifer Hoenig, who until Tuesday was director of the office of population surveys.

• The National Survey on Drug Use and Health has been administered in some form by the federal government since 1971, Hoenig said. The survey is the primary source of data on substance abuse and mental health concerns for people over age 12 in the U.S., and it's used by states, researchers, members of Congress and others.
• HHS is statutorily required to collect the data, but Hoenig says she wasn't given any information on how the agency will do that going forward.

"It's very likely that the data will not be available going forward and right now — knowing the issues in the country that we're dealing with, with mental health, substance use and substance use disorders — it's so vital," Hoenig told Axios.

• "Without knowing who needs it, we can't help people," she said.
• Hoenig added that staff working on other data systems within SAMHSA also lost their jobs.
• SAMHSA will be consolidated into a new Administration for a Healthy America under the HHS reorganization plan.

All federal staff working on the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program were also laid off Tuesday, leaving only a couple federal contractors to continue manning the block grant system that gives out billions of dollars each year, according to Caroline Kacmarsky, one of the few contractors left on the project.

• LIHEAP helps people in need pay their energy bills. It's run by the Administration for Children and Families.
• "The lack of clarity around these decisions that are being made by DOGE and others at the helm has created a great deal of chaos for our grant recipients on the ground, and beneficiaries have suffered," Kacmarsky told Axios.
• Kacmarsky said the program specialists who were fired provide assistance to grant recipients to make sure they're properly administering the program.
• "Without them, who will states turn to with questions?" she said.

Catch up quick: Kennedy last week outlined a plan to lay off 10,000 HHS staff, including about 3,500 at the Food and Drug Administration and 1,200 at the National Institutes of Health.

• HHS will shrink from 28 individual operating divisions to 15. Combined with early retirements and voluntary separations, HHS will lose about 25% of its workforce.

What they're saying: Former HHS leaders sounded alarms on social media Tuesday morning about lost institutional knowledge as a result of the rolling staff cuts.

• "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," Robert Califf, former FDA commissioner under the Obama and Biden administrations, wrote on LinkedIn.
• "I believe that history will see this a huge mistake. I will be glad if I'm proven wrong, but even then there is no good reason to treat people this way."

Alison Barkoff, who led the Administration for Community Living during most of the Biden administration, wrote that the loss of staff in the department will "hurt the millions of older adults, disabled people and their families and caregivers served by ACL's critical programs."

• ACL is being dismantled and its programs will be folded into other HHS agencies, per the initial reorganization announcement.

On Capitol Hill Tuesday, some Democrats decried Republicans' efforts to continue business as usual, trying to shift the focus of a House of Representatives hearing on FDA user fees into a referendum on the HHS cuts.

• "Our premier research institutions, which are the gem of the entire world, are being dismantled before our very eyes, and we are just sitting here talking about sunscreen," said Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.).

Zoom out: Newly confirmed NIH director Jay Bhattacharya sent an introductory email on Tuesday morning saying that staff reductions will require new approaches to carrying out key functions at the agency. He said he'll try to implement policy changes "humanely."

This story has been updated to reflect that the LIHEAP program gives out billions of dollars each year (not millions).