RFK Jr. Says He’s Rehiring Thousands Of People He Mistakenly Fired

The cuts were a mistake he’d always planned to make, Kennedy said in head-scratching remarks.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, told reporters Thursday that he plans to reinstate many employees and programs he began cutting last week.

In head-scratching remarks, Kennedy said he knew he was firing more workers than necessary when he announced 10,000 job cuts by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

“There were a number of instances where studies that should have not have been cut were cut, and we’ve reinstated them. Personnel that should not have been cut were cut ― we’re reinstating them, and that was always the plan,” he claimed while speaking to a press gaggle at an elementary school in Alexandria, Virginia.

Those job losses, which left thousands of Americans scrambling for work and brought life-saving research to a standstill, are all a part of “streamlining the agencies,” he said.

“The part of that, DOGE — we talked about this from the beginning — is we’re going to do 80% cuts, but 20% of those are going to have to be reinstalled, because we’ll make mistakes,” Kennedy said. “And one of the things that President Trump has said is that if we make mistakes, we’re going to admit it and we’re going to remedy it.”