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You're listening to the 1A podcast. I'm Jen White, and this is in case you missed it,

where we bring you some of the week's biggest conversations you might have missed.

The Trump administration's cutbacks to the federal workforce continued this week at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Thousands of staffords were fired at agencies like the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the layoffs last week

an additional reduction in force of 10,000 people on top of the 10,000 who've already left the department this year.

This reduction in force amounts to one of the largest government departments losing a quarter of its workforce.

One of the agencies affected is the National

Institutes of Health. The network of research centers funds much of the country's biomedical

research. So what could layoffs at NIH mean for the country's ability to research and

develop medical treatments? Helping us take a closer look is Carolyn Johnson. She's a science reporter

for The Washington Post,

and she joins us from Boulder, Colorado after this short break.

Stay with us. We've got a lot to get into.

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