Tracking the HHS April Fools’ Massacre

First things first…

The New York Times published a story Tuesday about the State Department’s enhanced social media audits of student visa applicants and credited The Handbasket with being first to report on it. They referred to it as “an independent news site,” which I think has a nice ring to it. It does feel like this publication has broken the containment of being a newsletter and has perhaps transcended into something bigger. And that’s really exciting.

In other exciting news, I’ll be part of a panel in New York City on Thursday, April 10th about independent journalism. I’ll be joining Oliver Darcy (Status), Nick Pinto (Hell Gate), Julianne Escobedo Shepherd (Hearing Things), John Ourand (Puck), and moderator Brian Stelter (CNN) to talk about this new frontier. Register to attend here. 

The Handbasket is subscriber-funded. If you want to support independent media during these dark times for democracy, become a paid subscriber today.

Thousands of Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) employees started the day Tuesday by learning they’d been fired. 

Some got the news via an email sent in the 5 o’clock hour of this morning, others found out by showing up to do their jobs and having their government IDs denied at security. No matter how they found out, the indignity and unbridled danger remains the same: Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is gutting the agencies in charge of our health, with the help of the nefarious para-governmental agency DOGE.

HHS is made up of 13 different entities, most of which focus on public health, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control (CDC). It’s the umbrella organization for all federal medical research, treatment and education; preventing the spread of disease and responding to outbreaks; food testing and safety for humans and animals; and so, so, so much more.

The department is massive: Before yesterday, it employed some 82,000 people. But they announced last week that they’d be cutting 20,000 jobs, which CNN reported would include: 

I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around the scale of destruction, so I went into a mode that’s unusual for me: data collection. As news of Reductions in Force (RIFs) rapidly rolled in Tuesday, it was apparent that after the initial dust settled, it would be impossible to clearly see just how thorough the Trump administration’s gutting had been without having requisite information. This wasn’t just trimming the fat—they were killing the whole animal and stripping it for parts. 

With data and posterity in mind, I started a Google doc to begin tracking all of the HHS offices that had either been shuttered entirely or reduced to the point of non-functionality. A helpful source at the CDC gave me a short list to get started, and from there it grew organically via tips shared directly with The Handbasket. Soon it was on Reddit, and the outreach continues to constantly pour in. 

At time of publishing this post, the list of eliminated or downsized HHS offices took up nearly six pages with two columns each. It includes offices like the Division of Tuberculosis Elimination, the Center for Tobacco Products, the Center for Mental Health Services, and the CMS Office of Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights. There isn’t a single person in this entire country whose life isn’t impacted by the essential functions of HHS, and soon we’ll see what happens when those functions are destroyed.

Compiling this list is a bulk of what I’ve been working on this week, and while it’s a bit of a departure from my usual output, I hope you view it as a worthy pursuit.

By some measures, this week has been the most catastrophic yet for what remains of the federal government. Monday afternoon I broke the news that the entire staff of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) was put on immediate paid administrative leave. The agency funds libraries and museums across the country through grants to state library systems, grants to museums, libraries, and Native communities and promotes lifelong learning and access to collections and information.

Wired reported earlier this week that DOGE is continuing its assault and pillage of the US Institute of Peace (USIP)—the independent nonprofit organization violently raided by DOGE. And on Tuesday, a federal judge ruled that DOGE’s slapdash transfer of USIP’s $500 million building deed to the General Services Administration—the agency that handles federal government real estate—was legal. Almost all USIP employees were terminated late last week. 

The administration’s bloodbath continues. But so does the tireless effort to put it under a microscope for all the world to see.

Have an addition to the HHS list? Other tips? Contact me on Signal at marisakabas.04 or email me at [email protected].