When the administration fires federal workers, it destroys services that work for us — services that your representatives and senators in Congress created for our benefit. So when Trump takes a chainsaw to entire departments, as he did in early April across agencies that focus on public health, Americans pay a cost by losing services that protect and save lives.
Let’s talk about some of the services the Trump administration destroyed this week:
- The Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, which amassed data on maternal and child health — crucial to helping mothers and babies survive in a country with a higher maternal mortality than any of its wealthy peers.
Everyone who works for PRAMS (the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System) at CDC was terminated today. That appears to be the end of a critical program which monitored infant and maternal health nationwide across pregnancy, childbirth & postpartum. talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/prams…
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social) 2025-04-01T22:11:27.046Z
- LIHEAP, or the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program — which literally keeps lower-income Americans in parts of the country with cold winters from freezing to death in their homes. In the 2023-24 season, it heated 5.9 million homes.
CNN reporting that everyone who administers LIHEAP (Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program) has been terminated. The program provides about $4 billion to help millions of Americans with their heating and cooling bills.www.cnn.com/2025/04/01/h…
— Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social) 2025-04-01T20:18:55.750Z
- The heart of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — which, er, works to prevent and control the spread of disease.
“We’re going to have patients die,” says Jade Pagkas-Bather, an infectious disease doctor at the University of Chicago who also specializes in HIV prevention. “Unnecessary, preventable death.”www.wired.com/story/cdc-gu…
— Angela Watercutter (@waterslicer.bsky.social) 2025-04-01T15:58:10.432Z
- The CDC team that focused on in-vitro fertilization and other ways of helping Americans with infertility to become parents:
Trump — the "fertilization president" who has promised via EO to make IVF more accessible — just cut a highly specialized team that focuses on infertility & other assisted repro technology as part of the larger CDC cuts.
— Alanna Vagianos (@alannavagianos.bsky.social) 2025-04-01T19:17:33.250Z
- Much of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products — in a massive gift to tobacco companies, whose fees fund the office — and the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health.
At FDA, I'm told Center for Tobacco Products's office of compliance and enforcement was slashed by 50%. All CTP contractors too. All pending CTP compliance cases will be affected.(Note that CDC's Office on Smoking & Health division was eliminated entirely – so there seems to be a theme here.)
— Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social) 2025-04-01T19:48:58.389Z
- … and family-planning funds for clinics that serve thousands of low-income patients and patients who lack insurance, cutting off their access to birth control, cancer screenings, and more. This last one is also a political hit because one of the biggest providers of these services is Planned Parenthood — making this move a low-key defund.
You can read the full story at the newsletter, but here's the quick rundown of what's coming from the Trump admin on Title X tomorrow. What a nightmare:
— Jessica Valenti (@jessicavalenti.bsky.social) 2025-04-01T00:38:36.435Z
If you want to understand how “thoughtful” these cuts are, here’s an anecdote. Some laid-off employees were told if they felt targeted by discrimination, they should reach out to a former department director. Trouble is, the official named died last year.