The Trump administration’s plan to dramatically reshape the nation’s health bureaucracy has been thrown into limbo, with a federal appeals court refusing to greenlight sweeping cuts and closures.
At the heart of the fight: Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s blueprint to slash 10,000 jobs, collapse nearly 30 divisions into half that number, and shutter half of the department’s regional offices. The restructuring would have shifted power inside the FDA, CDC, and other key agencies.
Nineteen states and Washington, D.C. pushed back, warning the overhaul would gut public health infrastructure—pointing to closed disease labs, abandoned research, and suspended partnerships. They argued the CDC couldn’t meet its legal mandate to track and combat outbreaks, and early childhood programs under Head Start faced existential threats.
In July, a federal judge agreed, ruling the administration had no authority to rewrite the very architecture of agencies created by Congress. That injunction froze the job cuts at four major divisions, including the CDC and the FDA’s tobacco unit.
The administration appealed, pointing to earlier Supreme Court rulings that had allowed mass firings elsewhere, but the appeals court wasn’t convinced. The judges—without naming themselves—said states had shown concrete harm, noting their reliance on HHS for disease testing, maternal and infant health data, and other services.
For now, Kennedy’s restructuring vision remains boxed in by the courts, leaving the battle over how far a White House can go in remaking federal health agencies far from over.
