AGs File Suit Over DOGE Cuts at HHS
Today, attorneys general from 19 states and Washington, D.C., filed a lawsuit in Rhode Island federal court challenging staffing cuts across the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Those cuts have reduced the department’s headcount by one-quarter, impacting nearly 20,000 employees over the course of the past three months.
“This administration is not streamlining the federal government; they are sabotaging it and all of us,” said New York State attorney general Letitia James, in a statement. “When you fire the scientists who research infectious diseases, silence the doctors who care for pregnant patients, and shut down the programs that help firefighters and miners breathe or children thrive, you are not making America healthy – you are putting countless lives at risk.”
HHS oversees the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, among other agencies essential to monitoring public health. The cuts pose a severe risk for foodbourne illnesses to spread undetected as well as disrupt manufacturing facility inspections and further delay the reviews of chemical food inputs.
The FDA has long been underresourced and under-equipped to handle many of its core functions, including overseeing food safety and monitoring risks in the food supply, and the widespread staff cuts have left the agency with little ability to function, according to Jim Jones, the former deputy commissioner overseeing the Human Food Program who spoke last week at the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT)’s Food Policy Impact 2025 meeting.
“When you get rid of the people who do human resources, contracts and budgets, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have to do those things,” Jones said. “What we’re going to see is that people with PhDs in nutrition, microbiology and toxicology – people who are focused on the core activities – have to divert their time to do administrative activities.”
James and her cohort of AGs said that the Trump Administration has “robbed HHS of the resources necessary to effectively serve the American people.”
