WSJ What’s News - How RFK Jr. Is Reshaping the U.S. Health Agencies

Episode Date: March 27, 2025

P.M. Edition for Mar. 27. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced 10,000 job cuts across the department. We speak with WSJ health reporter Liz Essley Whyte about the cuts�� impact. Plus, energy security in the U.S. was once all about oil—now, it’s about electricity. WSJ chief economics commentator Greg Ip discusses what that means for economic growth. And U.S. stocks end the day lower as investors react to President Trump’s automotive tariffs. Alex Ossola hosts. The Ford Executive Who Kept Score of Colleagues’ Verbal Flubs Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With the FIZ loyalty program, you get rewarded just for having a mobile plan. You know, for texting and stuff. And if you're not getting rewards like extra data and dollars off with your mobile plan, you're not with FIZ. Switch today. Conditions apply. Details at fiz.ca. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announces 10,000 job cuts and a major restructuring of the Department of Health and Human Services. Plus, U.S. economic growth now depends on electricity.

Electricity is almost a purely domestically sourced energy supply, and it's also very diverse. Because of these many different modes of electricity, there's no maximal exposure to disruptions in any single mode. And U.S. stocks end lower as President Trump's planned tariffs rattle the auto industry. It's Thursday, March 27th. I'm Alex Osela for The Wall Street Journal.

This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he will cut 10,000 jobs from the Health and Human Services Department that he leads. It's a move that will reshape the nation's health agencies and close regional offices. These worker cuts, in addition to the roughly 10,000 voluntary departures since President Trump took office, mean that the department will shed about one quarter of its workforce. For more, health reporter Liz Esley-White joins me now from

Washington. Liz, who will be affected by these cuts? Liz Esley-White, Health Reporter, Washington, D.C. It'll be workers from across the Department of Health and Human Services, including thousands from the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And we're not quite sure how this will play out. Kennedy has said this will not affect essential health services, but definitely people involved in the work there are worried. Democrats and the union are coming out and saying this will definitely affect health services just because it will slow down the people who do drug approvals and who respond to outbreaks because they'll have less tech support or less external communication support. What does this tell us about Kennedy's broader goal for HHS?

This is in keeping with a lot of criticism that Kennedy has leveled against HHS even before becoming secretary. One of his tweets last fall told FDA workers to pack your bags. And now they're facing some of the biggest cuts in this big reorganization. Also is very focused on fighting chronic disease. And part of what he's doing is combining several offices

into a new administration for a healthy America that he says will help fight chronic disease and make Americans healthier overall. One of the really key parts of this is that Kennedy would like to centralize the agency's comms, IT, procurement, HR, policy planning. Kennedy is saying that makes HHS really inefficient. And it seems like FDA and CDC are going to bear a big portion of these cuts. FDA is poised to lose nearly 20% of its workforce under the proposed cuts and CDC a similar percentage. That was WSJ Health reporter

Liz Esley-White. Thank you, Liz. Thank you so much. That was WSJ health reporter Liz Esley-White. Thank you, Liz. Thank you so much. New data out today from the National Association of Realtors shows that the number of homes going under contract in the U.S. rose 2% in February, a little faster than economists expected, but still lagging behind last year's levels. And the U.S. Commerce Department revised its fourth quarter GDP growth figure to 2.4 percent, up from a previous estimate of 2.3 percent.

The first official estimate of first quarter GDP growth, which most economists expect to come in below 2 percent, comes April 30th. U.S. Markets are still reacting to President Trump's announcement yesterday that he would impose 25 percent tariffs on automotive imports to the U.S. Foreign trading partners hit back. The European Union vowed a robust response, while Mexico's president said discussion, collaboration, and negotiation were still possible. Last night, the U.S. president threatened even more tariffs.

In a social media post, he warned that if the European Union and Canada worked together to harm the US economically, they would face levies that were quote, far larger than currently planned. Shares in car makers such as General Motors, Ford and Stellantis sank alongside international rivals like BMW, Toyota and Hyundai. Major US indexes ended the day slightly lower. The S&P 500 fell about 0.3 percent, the Dow dipped roughly 0.4 percent, and the Nasdaq dropped about half a percent.

The White House is pulling the nomination of Representative Elise Stefanik for U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. In a post on Truth Social, President Trump said he asked Stefanik to stay in Congress to help pass his agenda. If she left the House, it would trigger a special election in the New York district she represents, which would put Republicans' tight majority at risk. Britain and France are faltering in their campaign to persuade other European allies to send troops into Ukraine to secure a peace deal as doubts grow about the US's willingness to guarantee their security.

French President Emmanuel Macron convened dozens of leaders today in a bid to hammer out an agreement for a European deployment of land, air, and maritime forces that could go into Ukraine. But he emerged from hours of negotiations without a public commitment from other European countries to send troops.

Coming up, move aside oil, the future of the US's energy security is all about electricity. That's after the break. When you get into an escape plug-in hybrid, you get the perfect mix. You can chill in electric mode, turn it up in gas mode, or get the best of both in hybrid mode.

Choose how you move in the all-in-one Escape. And right now, get a $3,000 rebate on the Escape Plug-in Hybrid and all 2025 Escape models. For details, visit your Toronto area Ford store or ford.ca. For a long time in the US, energy security meant shoring up our supply of oil. The country wanted as much stability as possible because an interruption to supply from wars, disasters, or political convulsions could cause chaos. But as WSJ chief economics commentator Greg Ips says, the future of energy security means electricity. That will be especially true as the demand for electricity grows from things like data

centers, new factories, and the gradual electrification of everything from cars to home heating. Greg is here to tell us more. So Greg, where does most of this electricity come from in the US? Almost all of it comes from domestic sources, sources like renewables, wind, and especially solar, which has become very, very important. There's a lot of excitement about new nuclear technologies

that are on the drawing board. Geothermal, also another potential area of expansion. What's interesting about electricity is that unlike oil, which is very much a global market, and therefore we are in some sense vulnerable to global developments, electricity is almost a purely domestically sourced energy supply. And it's also very diverse. Because of these many different modes of electricity, there's no maximal exposure to disruptions in any single mode. GIGI GRONVALL-P And most of the cost involves the fuel itself. But with electricity, most of the cost is the infrastructure involved in generating

and transmitting it. And so electricity is a very capital intensive form of energy relative to oil. And that means you have long lead times and enormous capital demands. And that's especially important right now because the central point of my column is that we are seeing much faster rates of growth in

electricity demand in coming years, and we've seen in many decades. And that means that we need to have in place these capital-intensive infrastructure arrangements to make sure that we have the capacity to generate that electricity. What are electricity providers in particular doing to secure the supply? All of them are aware of these needs that are coming along. So they're filing with regulators plans to build more generating capacity, but you're seeing other arrangements coming along as well. So big users of electricity like Google and Amazon and Microsoft are building co-location

agreements instead of simply building a data center and then buying their electricity off the grid. They're actually making arrangements with like nuclear power plants to have direct access to that power. What does this mean for economic growth? Well, if you think about it in the old days, why did we worry about oil security? It's because if there was a shock to the supply of oil, it could really do a lot of harm to the American economy. Well, as oil becomes less important, those shocks are less of a risk. But you do have to worry about economic growth coming to a halt because we don't have enough electricity capacity or that capacity has been interrupted by some kind of accident

or demand spike or something like that. There is a big mission ahead for investors, the utility companies, the public, and our political leaders to basically have in place all those building blocks to make sure that that infrastructure that can serve the electric economy is there and able to accommodate those demands. Otherwise it will be a big negative for economic growth. That was WSJ Chief Economics commentator Greg Ip. Thanks Greg.

All right, thank you. Their parents, financial coaches, and tax advisors are all telling them to do it. So they're doing it. Young people are flocking to Roth IRAs. According to the latest data from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, of those who contribute to an IRA or a Roth IRA, 41% were under 40 in 2022, up from 28% in 2016. By getting the money in early, the thinking goes, young savers are giving it time to grow tax-free. Personal finance reporter Ashley Ebling told our Your Money Briefing podcast how people can get started with Roth IRAs. At the workplace, you have the 401k typically. There's some auto Roth IRAs in some states for small employers that don't have 401k plans.

But generally, it's up to the saver to go to a Fidelity, a Vanguard, a Robinhood, and they open it up on their own. One thing you might want to consider if you have a workplace plan at Fidelity or T. Rowe Price or somewhere, you can, if you open it up plan at Fidelity or T. Rowe Price or somewhere, if you open it up at the same place, then everything's on the same dashboard. But on the other hand, some of the people I talk to, they like having it separate and they feel like that makes it more fun and it's their very own savings. To hear more on this story, listen to tomorrow's episode of Your Money Briefing.

And finally, are you not trying to reinvent the ocean? Or maybe you're dancing on thin ice? These are just a few of the verbal flubs collected by Mike O'Brien, a longtime sales executive at Ford Motor who retired last month. For more than a decade, he kept a running list of mixed metaphors and malaprops his colleagues uttered in meetings. All in all, he collected more than 2,200 linguistic breaches, which became known as the board words. The story has lots more examples that you'll want to check out. We'll leave you a link in our show notes.

But honestly, I'm living for the comments section. As one commenter said, I'm first in line to buy the book. And that's what's news for this Thursday afternoon. Today's show was produced by Pierre Vianamé and Anthony Bansi with supervising producer Michael Cosmitis. I'm Alex Osela for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening.