They Worked to Prevent Death. The Trump Administration Fired Them. — ProPublica

Every day they solved complex problems with life terms or death:

Failure to comply with the donor organs to the critical patients.

Tobacco products designed to refer to children.

The death of the mother and the infant.

They were hired after legislators and bureaucrats discussed and negotiated and persuaded their colleagues – sometimes for many years – to make these problems whose work is solved.

Then, this month, they were fired within the widespread cleaning of federal workers Donald Trump. Suddenly, there was a question of the future of their health missions.

The White House did not publish figures about how much they were fired but reports of news started to summarize: about 750 workers at the Center for Disease Control and Preventionwhich plays the central role, responding to the pandemic; more than 1000 employees of the National Institute of Healthwhich finances and conduct rescue studies; Dozens in centers on Medicare and Medicaid serviceswhich manages health and insurance programs; and Edit staff at the food and medicines administrationControlling the safety of food, drugs and medical products.

Secretary of the Ministry of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy -Younger promised to throw federal medical centers, stating “whole departments” The FDA needs to be cut. Neither the administration nor the federal agencies answered the propublica questions, but earlier the White House press stated that they were Removing new employees Which were “not critical”.

“The health implications are serious,” said Susan Palah, an associate professor of the US Public Health Association, which is Sues with the Ministry of State EfficiencyA group leading firing for violation of federal transparency laws. “It is impossible that anyone believes that these cuts matters and do anything but performers.”

Propublica reporters talked to dozens of federal workers engaged in roles guarding the US public. They described the loss of critical positions they spent years training. Many have expressed fear that they would have left behind.

Propublica records the victims of cleaning, emphasizing the scale of what is lost as public health programs, and experienced experts fall into the blunt force of the Trump administration to reduce the federal government.

Protecting children from tobacco

For more than ten years, Dastin Bress has worked for various federal jobs, acting dispatcher 911 for the Navy and as a coastry member, responding to major chemical and oil spills. “I liked to work to protect the American people,” he said. “I never thought I would leave the government.”

Last year, when he joined the FDA, his mission was no different. As a socialist at the Agency Tobacco Center, he helped regulate electronic cigarettes and related items. Some were Designed so as to look like baby foodSimilar to cans with soda or decorated with cartoons like unicorns that eat pancakes. In recent years, more and more young children have landed in resuscitation poisoned by liquid nicotine. And from time to time Devices explode – In people’s pockets, either hands or faces. One man died after Shrapnell entered his brain.

Each week Brace Pcrutinesting New Product to make sure they will not contact the children and that the devices were safe for consumer use. The work required a close and careful consideration of thousands of pages of documents, combing them for hidden dangers. “The work takes time to do the right thing,” he said.

His work and the center were generally born with a two -party, realizing that the tobacco industry needs to be regulated. And only before 2009, after decades of waste industrythat FDA finally received a wide legal organ for this.

Agency has Historically fighting by Dial enough scientists And experts who could get higher wages in the private sector. “People do not come to such agencies as the FDA, and centers such as CTP, for money,” said Mitch Zeller, who was the director of the center from 2013 to 2022. “They come because they believe in the mission.”

In particular, the regulatory activity of the center is funded by the tobacco industry, and it does not rely on direct federal support. “No taxpayer is spent on the regulation of the tobacco industry,” Zeller said.

Last Saturday, Brace received a message about the abolition with other new staff on her team. Like those who sent other federal workers, he was contained in the boiler language, citing poor performance, although Brace received favorable reviews for the last year, according to his assessment records.

Brace estimated that more than 10% of the Center’s science bureau were stopped last week.

“The cases will be slowed down,” Briss said. “More mistakes can be made because the load is much higher.”

Contains dying mothers and babies

When Ariel Kane last year joined a team working on an innovative federal program to make the birth more secure in the US, the mission spoke to her.

She could save her life.

America has Worst mortality rate among high -income countries for pregnant and postpartum womenAnd those who in low -income communities face some of the highest risks. Their babies are also threatened when their moms cannot access prenatal assistance or quickly complicate them because they live in the so -called “maternal deserts”, where obstetric assistance is unavailable or limited.

The Kane program, located under the CMS, was created to support the mother on the Medicaid-Different Access to Birth, Sounts and Midwifery, Reduction of Risky Procedures, such as C-Diservices and tracking results, such as low baby birth weight. The best blood pressure monitoring can prevent life -threatening complications such as preeclampsia. Additional attention, which is given depression and use of substances, can abandon equally devastating consequences.

It Officially launched January 1And Kane was excited about the capabilities.

But after Trump’s inauguration, they were tasked with stopping the collection of races and ethnicity, which worried many. Racial disproportions are widespread in the mother’s health. Black women have Three times more likely than white women die on the cause of pregnancy, and more than twice as likely have a stillborn. Kane said she was also told not to communicate with state officials and not attending the upcoming mother’s health conference.

Then, just one and a half months after the launch of Kane and her three colleagues were fired. According to her, with the other two it is planned to leave at the end of the month, the team will be reduced almost twice.

“I’m just so angry,” Kane said. “This model that has great potential is just stretched. What does that mean to all the potential consequences we might have?”

Contains donor bodies from losing

For more than ten years, Amy Paris has worked at federal agencies as a solution to problems: rethinking overly bureaucratic and bulky processes to facilitate their society to navigate.

Last year, it was hired to help reform the procurement and transplantation of the country’s bodies, public-private partnership, which binds the donors to the patients in need of transplanting.

The program recently came under fire. Because thousands of patients were dying in the expectation lists, some donor organs were not even used. Multiple The kidneys had to be thrown Due to the transport delay – couriers do not pick them up on time or airlines that are inappropriate. One was accidentally left at the airport trolley.

After federal and Senate Studies have described numerous failures in detail, including the archaic system of information technology, the administration of medical resources and services announced the initiative of modernization In March 2023.

Paris joined the team in October last year as deputy digital services, working with transplant surgeons, technology specialists and scientists according to modernization data. “We were going forward,” she said. “We had alignment from the Democrats and Republicans on the hill, we had funding, and they hired more of us.”

As a new employee, she considered it to be one of the first to go to the federal cleaning of the labor force. However, it was devastated when received a message.

About half of her team was fired, she said that she had led to reform endlessly. After her shooting, a scheduled trip to investigate the main technology of the network system was to be canceled.

“We highlight our government in such a way that it will hurt people and kill people,” she said. “This is the worst in the world.”