On Tuesday, a significant number of employees at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) were laid off as the Trump administration began executing a workforce-reduction strategy projected to eliminate up to 10,000 positions from the department.

This marks the initial implementation of changes announced last week by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The layoffs come shortly after President Trump instituted policies that affect the collective-bargaining rights of federal employees at HHS and other agencies.

On the ground, health department workers formed lengthy lines outside federal buildings in Washington, D.C., and Maryland on Tuesday morning, anxiously awaiting news regarding their employment status.

Some employees resorted to checking their badges against entry systems that provided visual cues—red or green lights—to determine their job fate.

An HHS employee with two decades of service, waiting to hear her employment outcome, remarked that staff had been informed for some time that the department was under scrutiny for potential cuts.

"It's in Project 2025," she stated, referring to the broader workforce strategy discussed earlier this year.

In the early 2000s, HHS had previously offered voluntary buyouts and early retirement packages, but this current round of layoffs deviates from that precedent.

Another employee described the security procedures as reminiscent of airport TSA checks, highlighting the heightened atmosphere surrounding the layoffs.

Secretary Kennedy's restructuring initiative is designed to overhaul an agency with critical responsibilities, including food safety, disease monitoring, medical research, and health insurance administration for roughly half of the U.S. population.

This plan also includes the establishment of a new office, the "Administration for a Healthy America," which will manage programs related to addiction services and community health centers.

Ultimately, the objective is to decrease HHS staffing levels from approximately 82,000 to 62,000, achieving nearly a 25% workforce reduction through a combination of layoffs and early retirement offers.

Union leaders were briefed last Thursday regarding the anticipated layoffs, with estimates suggesting 8,000 to 10,000 employees could be affected.

Positions in sectors including human resources, procurement, finance, and information technology are being prioritized for cuts, particularly those in “high cost regions” or considered “redundant or duplicative.”

Job loss data indicates targeted cuts across multiple HHS agencies, including 3,500 at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 2,400 at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 1,200 at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and 300 at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

Responses in Congress reflected the contentious nature of these cuts, with former HHS personnel confronting Republican representatives about the extensive layoffs.

In an exchange, Indiana Republican senator Jim Banks remarked to a former HHS budget analyst that he “probably deserved” his job loss, an incident captured on video.

Karen Shields, a former executive at CMS, shared on LinkedIn that one team received a reduction-in-force notice suggesting they contact the office's former director for complaints, despite that director's passing in December.

Shields remarked, "This would have broken her heart."

As employees grappled with the uncertainty, one HHS worker expressed her confusion regarding the motivations behind the layoffs.

"We help vulnerable people, vulnerable communities.

We’re civil servants.

We don’t work for political parties," she stated, highlighting the disruption the cuts pose to public service initiatives.

"Normally they look at job series, performances, costs.

I don’t think that’s happening."