Given the sheer volume of indiscriminate firings and funding cuts under the Trump administration, it’s understandable that one such outrage would slip by us with little media attention. Yet, if the number of messages I’ve received from members of the first responder community are any indication, one particularly callous cut last week did not escape the attention of police officers, firefighters and federal agents who worked the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack sites in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania.
The Trump administration recently fired the head of the World Trade Center Health Program, and dismissed two-thirds of the entire staff at the program’s parent agency, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). The dismissals leave in doubt the future of the initiative that administers health care support for those who developed 9/11-related cancers, respiratory ailments and other medical issues.
First responders and investigators continue to die because of their exposure to the toxic air and materials of the 9/11 sites.
Under the direction of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Dr. John Howard, administrator of the WTC Health Program, was let go. So too were more than 800 doctors, epidemiologists and staffers throughout NIOSH whom the WTC team relies on to research, identify and address the myriad health issues related to the rescue, recovery and evidence collection efforts at the toxic 9/11 sites. When law enforcement and rescue workers develop cancers that may stem from those efforts, the WTC unit must first certify that the illness is 9/11-related before those patients can start to receive care under the program. While the 86 members of the WTC unit appear to remain employed, their essential support network at NIOSH is mostly gone, and officials and advocates assert these cuts will cripple the program.
John Feal, a 9/11 first responder who helped lobby for passage of the James Zadroga Act that created the WTC Health Program, blasted the gutting of the program. He told the New York Daily News the cuts were “the most reckless, careless, unconscionable, disgusting, and vile act against those in the 9/11 community that has been committed since Sept. 11, 2001.”
Benjamin Chevat, executive director of Citizens for the Extension of the James Zadroga Act, who successfully fought for renewal of the act, was similarly scalding in his assessment. “These cuts to NIOSH will be devastating to the World Trade Center Health Program and must be stopped. The first step must be restoring Dr. Howard as NIOSH Director immediately,” Chevat said in a statement. He called the move “another example of chainsaw incompetence.”
The potential loss or minimization of the WTC Health Program is no small thing. As I wrote in 2023, first responders and investigators continue to die because of their exposure to the toxic air and materials of the 9/11 sites. At least 10 times as many New York police officers (241) have died of 9/11-related illnesses than the number of officers (23) who were killed the day of the attack. Uniformed Firefighters Association President Andrew Ansbro, whose union represents FDNY rank-and-file firefighters, said in 2022 that he expected the number of firefighters dying of illnesses related to 9/11 to soon surpass the 343 FDNY personnel killed that day.
A similar phenomenon holds true for those who were deployed to the other crash sites. A 2021 report from the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund said “more people are now believed to have died of 9/11-related illnesses than were lost on September 11, 2001.”
The impact of the HHS cuts on the health of first responders is not limited to the WTC Health Program.
The impact of the HHS cuts on the health of first responders is not limited to the WTC Health Program. NIOSH also runs a larger Center for Firefighter Safety, Health, and Well-being, which examines issues such as cancers developed by firefighters and whether firefighters’ personal protective equipment adequately safeguards them. Beyond the first responder community, NIOSH’s mission is to help protect the safety of the working public, particularly those at greatest risk such as coal miners.
The potentially devastating hit to the WTC Health Program is particularly shocking, though, not just for its lack of compassion, but also because it will most impact a voting block believed to strongly support Trump. Police unions and organizations, including the Fraternal Order of Police, publicly announced their backing for Trump in the last election. The international Association of Fire Fighters, for its part, declined to endorse a candidate after backing Joe Biden in 2020, and some individual local firefighter unions have supported Trump.
The president and his axe-wielding Cabinet members seem either blind to the impact of the WTC health program cuts on their own voters or they don’t care. Either way, it’s likely that many 9/11 heroes and their families will never forget that Trump abandoned them.
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