The Trump administration's cutbacks to the federal workforce continued this week at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Thousands of staffers were fired at agencies like the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the layoffs last week, an additional "reduction in force" of 10,000 people on top of the 10,000 who've already left the department this year. This amounts to one of the largest government departments losing a quarter of its workforce.
One of the agencies affected is the National Institutes of Health. The network of research centers funds much of the country's biomedical research.
We discuss what the layoffs at the NIH mean for the country's ability to research and develop medical treatments.
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