The federal workforce underwent another round of layoffs after Russell Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), called on several federal agencies to issue additional reductions in force (RIFs) during the government shutdown. The RIFs, which were called “substantial” by OMB, included over a thousand people from critical HHS agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH), and Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). Within OASH, nearly the entire Office of Population Affairs (OPA) was fired. OPA oversees key reproductive health programs like the Title X Family Planning Program, a decades-long program that funds reproductive health services in low-income communities, and the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (TPP), which provides grants to help reduce teen pregnancy. It is now unclear if those programs will continue to operate. 

President Trump’s FY26 President’s Budget, an annual recommendation sent to Congress, eliminated funding for both Title X and TPP and called for subsuming OASH into the “Administration for a Healthy America (AHA)” a proposed entity within HHS that does not currently exist. Anti-abortion extremists have been calling for OPA to be closed for years and celebrated the news that the office was effectively shuttered.