RFK Jr. announces HHS reinstating some programs, employees cut by mistake

(WASHINGTON) -- On the heels of terminating 10,000 jobs from the Department of Health and Human Services this week, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told ABC News some programs would soon be reinstated because they were mistakenly cut.

"We're streamlining the agencies. We're going to make it work for public health, make it work for the American people," Kennedy said.

"In the course of that, there were a number of instances where studies that should have not have been cut were cut, and we've reinstated them. Personnel that should not have been cut were cut -- we're reinstating them, and that was always the plan."

Of the cuts that were made, Kennedy said some would be brought back because they were not the administrative roles that the Department of Government Efficiency, run by billionaire Elon Musk, was aiming to eliminate, such as communications or human resources jobs, and that research or "studies" were also wrongly swept up in the mass layoffs.

Kennedy's comments were in response to a question about a branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that monitors lead exposure levels among children and manages prevention across the country. The program was gutted on Tuesday.

"There were some programs that were cut that are being reinstated, and I believe that that's one," Kennedy said.

Kennedy did not provide details on what other programs might be reinstated, or when.

"The part of that, DOGE — we talked about this from the beginning — is we're going to do 80% cuts, but 20% of those are going to have to be reinstalled, because we'll make mistakes," Kennedy said. "And one of the things that President Trump has said is that if we make mistakes, we're going to admit it and we're going to remedy it, and that's one of the mistakes," Kennedy said, referring to the division at the CDC that handled lead surveillance.

Despite calling some program cuts a "mistake," Kennedy has maintained that no "essential services" or "frontline" jobs would be impacted by HHS's massive restructuring.

That was news to Erik Svendsen, the director of the division that oversaw the CDC's Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention branch, who told ABC News in an interview that the work was completely stopped. Svendsen had not received any indication it would be reinstated or continued through another part of the CDC.

HHS later provided an updated statement to ABC News saying that the CDC program that monitors lead exposure would not be reinstated.

"The personnel for that current division, of how it exists now, are not being reinstated. The work will continue elsewhere at HHS. We are consolidating duplicate programs into one place," an HHS official said.

Kennedy's comments about potential reinstatements at the department would not mark the first time positions were brought back after DOGE cuts. In the first round of government employee firings, targeted at probationary workers, hundreds of CDC and Food and Drug Administration employees were later brought back.

The CDC division that focused on lead surveillance efforts funded programming across the U.S. for state and local public health departments. It also monitored other environmental toxins, including wildfire smoke and radiation exposures.

"If our program is reinstated, that is fantastic news. We need this for our nation. We need this for our children across the country," Svendsen, the division director, said. "Without us, there is no other unit at the federal level that is here to support [local health departments] in doing what they need to do."

In one of the most recent public-facing crisis responses, a North Carolina team that was part of the CDC's Lead Poisoning Prevention and Surveillance program discovered lead exposure from applesauce snack pouches for children.

The snack eventually was found to have caused over 500 cases of elevated blood lead levels nationwide. The CDC team worked with the FDA to get the kids' snack recalled nationwide.

In the next few weeks, members of the CDC lead surveillance team were also scheduled to head to Milwaukee, where children were recently found to be exposed to hazardous levels of lead in multiple public schools. The trip was cancelled on Tuesday, as cuts rippled across all of HHS.

Mike Totoraitis, the Milwaukee Commissioner of Health, told ABC News that they were relying heavily on technical assistance from the CDC team to investigate the lead exposure and help the families of affected kids, before learning on Tuesday that the entire team they'd been working with had lost their jobs.

"I can tell you that that has real world implications for here in Milwaukee, as we respond to an ongoing lead crisis in our schools and it's difficult to comprehend," Totoraitis said of the team being cut.

Totoraitis said he was "cautiously optimistic" that the team would be reinstated, but also pointed to other public health issues that his city relies on the federal government for, which were still eliminated.

"This is just one issue area that affects the health of the US residents here, not just lead. There's plenty of other sections within the CDC that were eliminated that we're still trying to sift through and understand how that's going to impact the work here on the ground," Totoraitis said.

Editor's Note: This story has been updated to include a comment from HHS.

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