Letter follows mass layoffs from Trump administration during ongoing Republican government shutdown
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senators Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Alex Padilla, D-Calif., today led their Democratic Senate colleagues in slamming the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for firing federal employees working on the frontlines of America’s opioid crisis at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
HHS has now terminated more than 100 SAMHSA employees since the start of the Trump administration, reducing its staff to less than 50 percent capacity. SAMHSA provides key addiction and mental health treatment services, with a focus on rural and underserved areas, and is responsible for programs like the 9-8-8 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. The layoffs, part of another government-wide reduction in force carried out earlier this month by the Trump administration, will lead to more Americans falling into addiction because they will be unable to access SAMHSA’s critical addiction prevention and treatment services.
“SAMHSA is a critical first responder on the frontlines of our nation’s ongoing substance use and mental health crises,” the senators wrote in their letter to Kennedy. “The firing of key staff at this agency threatens to undermine years of hard-won progress on the opioid crisis, and could not come at a worse time. Right now, communities across the country – in both red and blue states – continue to face record overdose deaths and escalating rates of mental health conditions and substance use disorder.”
Kennedy’s decision to purge public health professionals not only derails progress made by a workforce with irreplaceable experience, but it also contradicts the Administration’s pledge to tackle the fentanyl crisis, expand mental health services, and end the opioid epidemic.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 73,000 people died from overdosing from April 2024 to April 2025. Wyden and Padilla’s letter further warned that these terminations will lead to more opioid-related deaths and illicit drugs flowing into communities across the United States.
This letter is part of Wyden’s ongoing effort to address the opioid crisis in Oregon and nationwide, and continue to pressure the Trump administration to fulfill its promise to address this crisis. Last week Wyden questioned the DEA on what it’s doing to crack down on chemical broker middlemen that help cartels procure chemicals needed for illicit fentanyl production.
“We are in the throes of a mental health and addiction crisis in the US – we should be staffing up to meet the challenge, not shedding talent without cause,” said Dwight C. Holton, Chief Executive Officer of Lines for Life.
In addition to Wyden and Padilla, the letter to HHS was signed by Senators Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md., Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Cory Booker, D-N.J., Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., Jack Reed, D-R.I., Tina Smith, D-Minn., Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., Mark Warner, D-Va., Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., and Mazie Hirono, D-Hawai’i.
The text of the letter is here.
A web version of this release is here.
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