RFK Jr. Admits HHS Mass Firings Should Have Been 'Targeted Cuts'

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. now says last year’s mass firing of 10,000 HHS employees under the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency should have been 'targeted cuts' rather than broad reductions in force, acknowledging that roughly 20% of those workers 'should not have been cut.' In a Feb. 12 interview with podcaster Theo Von, Kennedy called some of the layoffs 'very good cuts' but conceded the agency would have been better off keeping many newer staff and changing the culture instead of purging entire units — including a CDC office that worked on preventing childhood lead poisoning, which was later reinstated. The remarks mark a rare on‑record admission from a cabinet official that DOGE’s approach to shrinking the federal health bureaucracy was flawed, even as the White House touts the job cuts alongside better‑than‑expected January employment numbers in a year when overall job growth collapsed to its weakest level since 2020. The article also notes that nearly 1,000 more HHS workers were laid off in a 'Friday‑night massacre' last fall, and that HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill and General Counsel Mike Stuart are expected to depart amid an ongoing Trump‑driven restructuring of the department’s leadership. On social media, critics of RFK Jr. — including many current and former HHS staff — are seizing on his comments as confirmation that politically driven purges gutted critical public‑health capacity, while defenders frame them as overdue course‑correction in an agency they see as bloated and politicized.