RFK Jr., DOGE gutted legally required offices. Courts may undo it all. [View all]
Source: Politico
05/11/2025 12:00 PM EDT
The Trump administration’s purge of the health department is cutting so deep that it has incapacitated congressionally mandated programs and triggered legal challenges.
The administration insists the cuts are a lawful “streamlining” of a “bloated” agency, but federal workers, Democratic lawmakers, state officials and independent legal experts say keeping offices afloat in name only – with minimal or no staff – is an unconstitutional power grab.
While agencies have some discretion over how to fulfill Congress’s demands, the upheaval inside the Department of Health and Human Services has claimed a host of programs the agency is required by Congress to maintain — cuts that are especially vulnerable to lawsuits and could upend Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s goal of slimming down a workforce he has repeatedly said is rife with waste, fraud and abuse.
A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s sweeping layoffs at several agencies, including HHS, saying that cooperation of the legislative branch is required for large-scale reorganizations.
Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/11/trump-transforms-congressionally-mandated-health-offices-into-ghost-towns-00340176
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