U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand on Sunday said as the Trump administration keeps gutting the World Trade Center Health Program (WTCHP), their Republican counterparts should leverage their budget vote to end the continuous cuts to the crucial health program for thousands of New Yorkers.
Nearly all of the remaining staff at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) were laid off Friday, according to CBS News. This means the WTCHP, which runs under NIOSH, will also continue to shrink, the news agency said.
Among the layoffs to NIOSH's World Trade Center Health Program were nurses, scientists, staff dealing with enrollment, member services and other administrative duties, according to CBS.
Much of NIOSH, an arm of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had already experienced layoffs on April 1.
Schumer and Gillibrand said the Trump administration's funding cuts was "a dereliction of duty by the federal government."
“Since the Trump administration started, more than a quarter of the WTCHP staff are now gone,” said Schumer. "None of these cuts have anything to do with efficiency. This is [Make America Great Again] extremism pure and simple and it hurts our brave first responders and others who risked life and limb on 9/11, who rushed to the towers. These people are suffering. They're getting cancers from the chemicals they breathed in when they ran to the towers to help protect us, and now they have to deal with this assault again, and again and again. How vicious, how nasty, how callous.”
NY House members in Congress must use their leverage on the president as it relates to their vote on the fiscal year 2026 federal budget, he said.
“Cutting staff critical to the operation of the World Trade Center Health Program will devastate our ability to care for sick first responders and survivors,” said Gillibrand.
The WTCHP provides critical medical treatment, research, and monitoring to over 137,000 responders and survivors of the September 11th terrorist attacks.
"The continued cuts to the WTC Health Program staff by the Trump Administration are a true disaster and place in peril the lives and health of every responder and survivor that rely on this program for their care," said Gary Smiley of FDNY EMS Local 2507, Uniformed EMTs, Paramedics & Fire Inspectors WTC Liaison. "The delays in care these egregious actions are causing are reprehensible."
