Death By 10,000 Layoffs

April 8, 2025

A major blow to women’s health ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

April 8, 2025

Greetings, Meteor readers,

Congratulations to newly crowned NCAA champions the Florida Gators and UConn Huskies. But more importantly, congratulations to me for winning my first bracket pool ever! It only took three years 🥴.

In today’s newsletter, we look at the woman-specific impact of layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services. Plus, we’re all still thinking about The White Lotus.

Should I get a new dog,

Shannon Melero 🏆

WHAT’S GOING ON

Death by (ten) thousand layoffs: Last week the Trump administration decimated the Department of Health and Human Services; in the words of one former employee, “shitshow is an understatement.” As a result, the organizations housed under HHS—the Center for Disease Control, National Institutes of Health, Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid— lost 10,000 staff members, effectively shuttering a number of departments.

But not just any departments; the cuts will roll back decades of hard-won progress on women’s health research. Just take a look at what we’ve lost: Most of the CDC’s Division of Reproductive Health was laid off, including the team responsible for updating contraception guidelines and groups researching IVF and fertility clinics’ success rates (despite Trump’s promises to make the procedure more accessible). Three of the four branches of the Division of Violence Prevention were also eliminated. The division, established three decades ago, was crucial to framing violence as a public health problem, and yet last week, on the first day of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, all of the staff working on intimate partner violence prevention and sexual assault prevention programs were dismissed. The administration also fired all of the CDC scientists researching drug-resistant STIs.

As is usually the case, these cuts will disproportionately impact Black, Latine, and lower-income women. The entire team working on the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, a project started in 1987 to reduce infant morbidity and mortality by offering maternal health guidance through the entire birth process, was laid off last week. “Black women in America are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women,” one expert told Rolling Stone, and “we know this in large part because of the data collected and analyzed by the CDC.” And the timing of the system’s shutdown couldn’t be worse, a public health professor explained to Mother Jones: It “jeopardizes women and infants’ health at a time when maternal mortality rates in the US have been rising and access to maternity care is increasingly difficult.”

So what happens next and how can you help? Lawyers contend that many of the layoffs are on “shaky legal ground”; some state attorneys general have sued to block them. If your state hasn’t joined the lawsuit, file a complaint with your AG’s office online and ask them to fight back against these layoffs. If there is a local domestic violence shelter or rape crisis center in your area, it’s a great time to call them and ask exactly what they need. The government may not care, but we still can.

AND:

The Supreme Court has ruled that the Trump administration can continue to deport Venezuelans en masse under the protection of the rarely used wartime law, the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, with only one caveat: the administration now has to give notice of deportation ahead of time. The ruling is only a half-win for the administration, though, since the Court ruled that the ACLU and Democracy Forward could reintroduce their suits against the Act—just one at a time for each man detained, rather than in one large group. In a dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recalled the internment of the Japanese during World War II, writing, “We are just as wrong now as we have been in the past, with similarly devastating consequences. It just seems we are now less willing to face it.”
Beloved YouTube star Ms. Rachel is once again under attack for her salacious political view that children should not be killed or starved to death. But I hope she cannot hear those people over the sounds of kisses she’s giving to her new baby girl, Susannah. Our biggest congratulations to the Griffin-Accurso family!

MY CHILD’S FAVORITE COUPLE, MS. RACHEL AND HER HUSBAND MR. ARON. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

Back in February, a large image of Harriet Tubman, along with a quote from her, was removed from a National Park Service web page about the Underground Railroad. They were replaced with text that didn’t mention slavery until the third paragraph—and pictures of Postal Service stamps that touted “Black/White cooperation.” No one noticed these changes until The Washington Post reported on them earlier this week, but thanks to backlash from historians and social media users, the missing content has been restored. Yelling works.
And here’s something you can yell about right now! The Trump administration is threatening to withhold funding from the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum unless it promises it will “not recognize men as women in any respect.” In other words? Trans Americans (whether scientists, writers, activists or athletes) are not part of Trump’s version of American history. It doesn’t have to go down like that. Tell the Smithsonian what you think.
If you need a little pick-me-up after all the news of the day, we invite you to spend some time in a happy place with Bad Bunny’s Tiny Desk concert.

Still trying to unpack the season finale of The White Lotus? Us, too. I’m locked in an intense debate with my colleague Rebecca Carroll over Belinda’s fate. And if you’re wondering why Parker Posey’s character Victoria Ratliff is so beloved despite being generally annoying, writer Amy Odell has theories. Spoilers if you click!