Columbia’s Herbert Irving Cancer Center is 52 streets, 2.6 miles, and five subway stops away from the university’s main campus and the pro-Palestinian protests that have been taking place there.
On the evening of Feb. 15, when the dreaded letter of termination arrived, an NCI employee was just a few weeks away from job security—the end of the probationary period.
As NCI employees and others at HHS were receiving notices of termination, national cancer organizations called on Congress “to restore stability to NIH.”
An estimated 5,200 of HHS employees have been fired during the course of this week. Since the firings are ongoing, no final tally of their extent exists. At this writing, approximately 1,200 of the fired HHS employees were working at NIH, about 700 at FDA, and 750 at CDC.
Earlier this week, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed as secretary of Health and Human Services amid many resignations at federal health agencies and cancellations of NIH and NCAB meetings. All of this happened at a time when the Trump administration is reportedly preparing to fire thousands of HHS workers.
A federal judge in Massachusetts on Feb. 10, issued a preliminary restraining order, blocking the Trump administration from enforcing an NIH guidance that would cut the indirect costs paid on NIH grants to a flat rate of 15%.
The web page for the FDA Office of Minority Health and Health Equity is no more. The pages for the NCI Diversity Training and Biomedical Workforce Development Branch and Disparities Research Branch are kaput as well.
The Trump administration did exactly what it said it would do to disorient anyone involved in making policy or touched by it. The president and his crew have “flooded the zone”—the term and the image are theirs, as is the strategy of dropping a flurry of executive orders and memoranda that shake the foundations of the American system of government, raising questions of legality and constitutionality, and, above all, making it a challenge for anyone to see the entire picture and think strategically.
Rooting out the “illegal and immoral discrimination” of DEI is the first order of business for Trump
Surprised was the last thing anyone should claim to be as the Trump administration, on its first day, smashed the federal government’s diversity equity and inclusion offices, literally sending employees who administer these programs packing and making plans for their prompt firing.
W. Kimryn Rathmell has stepped down as NCI director, opting to hand her resignation to the Biden administration over facing the uncertainties that Trump and his team are expected to usher in starting next week.
