Top GOP Senator Asks RFK Jr. To Reverse Cuts At Miner Safety Agency | EUROtoday

WASHINGTON ― A prime Republican senator is asking on Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to reverse layoffs at a key authorities workplace geared toward stopping work-related accidents and diseases.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), the No. 4 Republican within the Senate, warned that the Trump administration’s cuts to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) would hurt the well being and well-being of coal miners, a key business in her state.

“I believe in the President’s vision to right size our government, but I do not think eliminating the NIOSH coal programs and research will accomplish that goal,” Capito wrote in a letter to RFK Jr. on Tuesday. “The mission and work conducted by the specially trained NIOSH employees is not duplicative of any other government program.”

“I am concerned that the [reductions in force] at NIOSH will undermine the vital health programs important to so many West Virginians,” she added. “I urge you to bring back the NIOSH employees immediately so they can continue to support our nation’s coal industry.”

Capito mentioned the discount in pressure on the company would negatively affect a program that research respiratory illness and supplies black lung screenings to coal miners. She warned that eliminating “dedicated scientists with years of training” would result in the closure of specialised laboratories centered on miner security.

“Decommissioning the labs will cost millions of taxpayer dollars. If the labs were to later be brought back online, additional taxpayer dollars would be spent to re-comply with numerous regulations and inspections,” the senator identified.

An HHS official advised HuffPost that “NIOSH, along with its critical programs, will join the Administration for a Healthy America (AHA) alongside multiple agencies to improve coordination of health resources and recommendations for the prevention of work-related injury and illness.”

Earlier this month, RFK Jr. introduced plans to put off 10,000 workers as a part of a significant restructuring initiative on the company. The information was met with chaos and confusion, with some workers being recalled in what the secretary acknowledged had been “mistakes.” The discount in pressure impacts main departments, together with the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health.

HHS has additionally halted crucial information assortment on most cancers charges in firefighters, mother-to-baby transmission of HIV and syphilis, outbreaks of drug-resistant gonorrhea and instances of carbon monoxide poisoning, per Politico.

Few Republicans have publicly criticized the cuts to authorities packages, even because the Trump administration has taken a sledgehammer to the nation’s scientific group, shedding scientists and researchers and freezing their funding.

“A climate of fear has descended on the research community,” greater than 1,900 scientists warned in a letter printed earlier this month. “For over 80 years, wise investments by the US government have built up the nation’s research enterprise, making it the envy of the world.”

“Astoundingly, the Trump administration is destabilizing this enterprise by gutting funding for research, firing thousands of scientists, removing public access to scientific data, and pressuring researchers to alter or abandon their work on ideological grounds,” the letter added.