FDA moves to rehire medical device staffers fired only days earlier

Associated Press — Barely a week after mass firings at the Food and Drug Administration, some probationary staffers received unexpected news over the weekend: The government wants them back.

Beginning Friday night, FDA employees overseeing medical devices and other key areas received calls and emails notifying them that their recent terminations had been “rescinded effective immediately,” according to messages viewed by The Associated Press.

Three FDA staffers impacted by the decisions spoke with the AP on condition of anonymity because they planned to continue working for the agency and weren’t authorized to discuss its internal procedures.

The reversal is the latest example of President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s chaotic approach to cost-cutting, which has resulted in several agencies firing, and then scrambling to rehire, employees responsible for nuclear weapons, national parks and other government services.

The FDA reinstatements followed pushback by lobbyists for the medical device industry, which pays the agency hundreds of millions of dollars annually to hire extra scientists to promptly review products. The industry’s leading trade group said Monday “a sizeable number” of device reviewers would apparently be returning to FDA.

“This would be welcome news, and I appreciate the administration for acting quickly,” AdvaMed CEO Scott Whitaker said in an emailed statement. “We all share the same goal — an efficient, effective FDA review process that helps advance the medical technologies American patients depend on.”

FDA staffers said entire teams of five or more medical device reviewers had been reinstated. There did not appear to be a similar effort to rehire staffers in other parts of the agency, including its food and tobacco centers.

The agency hasn’t released official numbers on the terminations, but former FDA officials have pegged the number at roughly 700, with more than 220 coming from the medical device center. That would represent roughly 10% of the program’s total staffing.

The FDA did not respond to requests Monday about how many employees were being reinstated.

Like other agencies, the FDA terminations went to employees in their probationary period, typically the first two years of federal employment. But that approach resulted in the terminations across key areas where the agency has been working to beef up staffing, including rapidly evolving fields like artificial intelligence and digital health. The cuts…