New York Attorney General Letitia James and 18 other Democratic state attorneys general are filing a federal lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to overhaul the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services by shrinking its size and laying off employee who oversee the nation’s food and health care systems.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in March announced a major restructuring plan including the consolidation of divisions from 28 to 15 and elimination of 20,000 full-time employees, saying it would save taxpayers $1.8 billion per year.
In a statement on May 5, James said the states’ lawsuit in Rhode Island U.S. district court takes aim at Kennedy Jr.’s “reckless, irrational, and dangerous” efforts that erase decades of public health progress and leaves the federal government “unable to execute many of its most vital functions.” It also decried the federal employees at HHS who were locked out of their work emails and computers on April 1, as well as abandoned experiments, canceled site visits and trainings and shuttered laboratories.
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“This administration is not streamlining the federal government; they are sabotaging it and all of us,” James said. “When you fire the scientists who research infectious diseases, silence the doctors who care for pregnant people, and shut down the programs that help firefighters and miners breathe or children thrive, you are not making America healthy – you are putting countless lives at risk.”
The HHS overhaul includes cutting the number of regional offices by half, from 10 to 5. During the announcement touting the overhaul, Kennedy said HHS was “realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities,” which includes what he calls the “chronic disease epidemic.”
“We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl,” Kennedy said.
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The HHS cuts are part of the Department of Government Efficiency’s workforce optimization initiative, led by Elon Musk, President Donald Trump’s billionaire adviser. Last week, the Trump administration released a proposed 2026 budget with a 26% cut to the HHS’ discretionary budget. The “skinny budget” request released by the Office of Management and Budget, seeks $93.8 billion for the HHS, a decrease of about $33 billion over the fiscal 2025 enacted level.
Trump’s budget proposal calls for big cuts to the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention while asking for $500 million for Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again initiative. The administration says the initiative will allow Kennedy to “tackle nutrition, physical activity, healthy lifestyles, over-reliance on medication and treatments, the effects of new technological habits, environmental impacts, and food and drug quality and safety.”
The HHS budget proposes reducing funding for CDC by $3.6 billion and NIH by $18 billion while maintaining funding for “core Medicare and Medicaid operations.”
On May 14, Kennedy is expected to appear before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing to discuss the budget and the overhaul of the HHS.
Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is a White House Correspondent for USA TODAY. You can follow her on X @SwapnaVenugopal
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump administration sued by 19 states for overhauling HHS, staff cuts
