#hhs

#hhs

Since last March, the Department of Health and Human Services has been using AI tools from Palantir to screen and audit grants, grant applications, and job descriptions for noncompliance with President Donald Trump's executive orders targeting "gender ideology" and anything related to diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI), according to a recently published inventory of all use cases HHS had for AI in 2025.

A third-party arbitrator has ordered the Department of Health and Human Services to walk back its return-to-office mandate for thousands of employees represented by one of its unions. Arbitrator Michael J. Falvo ruled on Monday that HHS must "rescind the return-to-office directive," and immediately reinstate remote work and telework agreements for members of the National Treasury Employees Union. HHS rescinded those workplace flexibility agreements early last year, after President Donald Trump ordered federal employees to return to the office full-time.

the research would have followed 14,000 infants in the West African nation of Guinea-Bissau. The problem? Only 7,000 of those newborns would have received an urgently needed hepatitis B vaccine, in order to compare the two groups. On top of the flagrant ethics violations, the total cost of the research would have exceeded the cost to pay for "over a decade's worth of Hepatitis B vaccine birth doses [for everyone] in Guinea-Bissau."

President Donald Trump's administration said Tuesday that it is withholding funding for programs that support needy families with children in five Democratic-led states over concerns about fraud. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the program, will require the states to provide extra documentation to access the funds. "Families who rely on child care and family assistance programs deserve confidence that these resources are used lawfully and for their intended purpose," HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O'Neill said in a statement.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has identified his first target following his declaration earlier this month to cut off Medicaid and Medicare funding to any hospital that provides health care to trans youth. Last Friday in a social media post, HHS announced that it was referring Seattle Children's Hospital for investigation for providing gender-affirming care to trans youth. Of course, Kennedy's declaration was simply that-a declaration with no basis in science.

A federal judge in Oregon has blocked President Donald Trump's administration from pulling sexual education funding over curricula mentioning diverse gender identities. U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken issued the preliminary injunction Monday as part of a lawsuit filed against the Health and Human Services Department by 16 states and the District of Columbia, which argued that pulling such money violated the separation of powers and federal law.

Numbers are still sketchy, but reports from Friday indicate that more than 4,000 federal workers overall were initially targeted for layoffs. The Trump administration linked the firings to the ongoing government shutdown, which legal experts have suggested is illegal. Unions representing federal workers have already filed a lawsuit challenging the move. Of the reported 4,000 terminations, about 1,100 to 1,200 were among employees in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

RIFs have begun, Vought wrote in a social media post. Citing anonymous sources in the administration, the news outlet Politico reported that the agencies affected include the departments of the Interior, Homeland Security, Treasury, Environmental Protection Agency, Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services (HHS), and Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Spokespersons at several of those departments, including the Treasury and HHS, have since confirmed that layoff notices have gone out to employees.

A new report from the Center for American Progress and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund shows that historically Black colleges and universities receive a disproportionately low percentage of federal research and development funding. While HBCUs make up roughly 3 percent of all four-year higher ed institutions, they've received less than 3 percent of R&D funding since at least 2010, according to the report. In recent years, between 2018 and 2023, they were awarded less than 1 percent of R&D expenditures.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week is pausing all long-term work-from-home accommodations, including for employees with disabilities, according to an internal note reviewed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The move comes after the CDC's parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, issued an updated policy in mid-August removing telework as a "reasonable accommodation" option for employees. On Tuesday, the CDC posted an official announcement in an internal publication detailing HHS' updated telework policy. The CDC's Office of Human Resources requested clarification regarding the new policy, according to the note.

When she succeeded Anthony Fauci as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Jeanne Marrazzo felt that she'd landed "probably the most important infectious-disease job in the world," she told me. After decades of working in academia, she now had the power to influence, nationwide, the science she knew best-overseeing 4,500 employees at a $6.5 billion institute, the second largest by budget at the National Institutes of Health, the world's largest public funder of biomedical research.

There were Republicans who offered broad support for Kennedy. Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Ida.) said, "President Trump and Secretary Kennedy have made a steadfast commitment to make America healthy again." Yet some Republicans notably did push Kennedy on how his long-standing opposition to vaccine mandates is affecting policy, and on Kennedy's doubts about the safety of various vaccines. Sen. John Barasso (R-Wyo.) said, "There are real concerns that safe, proven vaccines like measles, like hepatitis B and others, could be in jeopardy."

Until we release the final report, any claims about its contents are nothing more than speculation,

The action prompted a lawsuit from nine medical groups who alleged the administration's actions were arbitrary, illegal and threatened public health. Driving the news: Under the agreement, the Health and Human Services Department will reinstate the webpages in question to reflect how they appeared online as of January 29, 2025. Once that happens, the case will then dismissed, according to AcademyHealth, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

The National Institutes of Health shouldn't cut off funding to 900 grants that the agency previously canceled and then had to restore thanks to a June court order, lawyers for the Department of Health and Human Services said last week. The Supreme Court recently overturned that court order, paving the way for NIH to once again cut off funding to the grants. However, the justices also kept in place a lower court order that found that NIH's directives for the grant terminations were unlawful.

A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from expelling hundreds of Guatemalan children who crossed the U.S. border alone. Although the government had not obtained legal permission to remove the children, some of their lawyers said, Guatemalan children were already loaded on planes on a tarmac while the judge conducted a hearing about the situation on Sunday, a U.S. attorney confirmed. The temporary halt, issued Sunday afternoon, allows lawyers 14 more days to discuss the case and prevents any children from being removed during the next two weeks.

CVS and Walgreens, the country's two largest pharmacy chains, are for now clamping down on offering Covid vaccines in more than a dozen states, even to people who meet newly restricted criteria from the Food and Drug Administration. On Thursday, Amy Thibault, a spokeswoman for CVS, said the vaccine was not available at pharmacies in 16 states, citing the current regulatory environment and emphasizing that the list could change. She did not provide an explanation for the change.

The MBRS program prioritizes racial classifications in awarding federal funding, including by relying on 'minority student enrollment' to determine applicant eligibility.

HHS has silently removed reports assessing the mental health of transgender youth in Utah, while maintaining data on cisgender youth, raising concerns about transparency.

The layoffs decimated the workforce that processes FOIA requests across FDA centers overseeing vaccines, drugs, tobacco, medical devices, and food, leading to significant operational disruptions.