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Rescue personnel walk near a building that collapsed after a strong earthquake struck central Myanmar on Friday, March 28, 2025.
Hard Numbers: Major earthquake strikes Southeast Asia, Israel passes judicial reform, Fox News wins advertisers, Pollution kills, HHS sees massive job cuts, Suspected US strikes hit Houthis
7.7: Two disastrous earthquakes, the first of 7.7 magnitude, struck Myanmar on Friday, destroying vital infrastructure across Southeast Asia. Videos of a collapsed bridge in Mandalay, Myanmar, and a fallen building in Bangkok, Thailand, have emerged. The number of casualties isn’t yet known, although several are feared trapped under a fallen skyscraper in the Thai capital. At least 144 people have been confirmed dead.
71,000: Israel’s right-wing government on Thursday passed a contentious law to allow politicians greater sway in judicial appointments, despite some 71,000 opposition amendments. The move is a part of the judicial overhaul that protesters have been fighting for over a year and comes amid Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial.
125: Since the US election, Fox News has gained 125 new high-profile advertisers as Rupert Murdoch’s cable network continues to draw soaring viewership during President Donald Trump’s second term. Businesses such as Amazon, GE Vernova, JPMorgan Chase, Netflix, and UBS have recently run ads on Fox News for the first time in over two years.
5.7 million: According to a new World Bank study, 5.7 million people are killed annually by air pollution. The global institution is calling on countries to take an integrated approach to halve the number of people breathing unhealthy air by 2040 and points to places like Mexico City, which has successfully curbed pollution, and Egypt and Turkey, which have put financing mechanisms in place to support emission reduction.
20,000: The Trump administration announced Thursday that it will cut 20,000 positions from the Department of Health and Human Services – 10,000 from job cuts and 10,000 from voluntary departures – as part of a major restructuring that its chief, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., says “will do more — a lot more — at a lower cost to the taxpayer.” RFK says the reorganization is intended to help the department prioritize the fight against chronic diseases, but critics fear it could hinder the critical agency, which includes Medicare and the Federal Drug Administration. And throughout the federal government, officials are planning for between 8% and 50% staff cuts, according to an internal White House document obtained by the Washington Post.
19: Two weeks after the Trump administration dropped its first bombs on Houthi rebels in Yemen — details of which were revealed over the now-infamous Signal chat — the United States is believed to have attacked again early Friday, firing at least 19 strikes. The extent of the damage is unclear, although the intensity of the bombardment has increased since the Biden administration first started pounding the Houthis.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies during his Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing in January.
RFK Jr. guts HHS, cutting 10,000 positions
Last week, Donald Trump signed an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education after firing or laying off half its workforce, around 2,000 people. Now, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has announced his department of Health and Human Services will eliminate 10,000 full-time positions in addition to the 10,000 who’ve left voluntarily through early retirement offers. The HHS roster will drop from 82,000 to 62,000 employees, and its divisions will go from 28 to 15.
The Trump administration has promised to reduce the size of government, and it’s proceeding at pace. Kennedy is citing cost savings, at $1.8 billion a year, and streamlining a “dysfunctional” bureaucracy as reasons for the job cuts. But critics like Larry Leavitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, a health policy organization, warn that such deep cuts affect the department’s capacity for oversight and program or service delivery.
Kennedy has set out to remake US health policy in line with his Make America Healthy Again movement. Ian Bremmer, founder and president of Eurasia Group, has said the MAHA movement is “a worldview that blends concerns about corporate influence on healthcare with skepticism towards mainstream medicine.” It also leans heavily on vaccine hesitancy, conspiracy theory, and alternative medicine.
“We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl,” Kennedy said in a statement about the restructuring. “We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,” he added, confirming that MAHA is firmly the order of the day at HHS.Tulsi Gabbard hugs President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 12, 2025.
Gabbard and RFK Jr. confirmed by US Senate
On Thursday, the Senate voted to confirmRobert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services Secretary. The vote also went along party lines, 52-48, with McConnell also voting with Democrats against Kennedy.
RFK Jr., like Gabbard, has set off alarm bells. Ian Bremmer, founder and president of Eurasia Group, says Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement is “set to shake up health policy” in the US. MAHA, says Bremmer, is “a worldview that blends concerns about corporate influence on healthcare with skepticism towards mainstream medicine.” It’s also made up, notes Bremmer, of wellness culture, vaccine hesitancy, alternative medicine, and deep state conspiracy – and it crosses ideological divides. It is, in a word, messy, and will almost certainly do what its proponents promise: upset the status quo on health policy in the US.Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump's nominee to be Director of National Intelligence, testifies before a Senate Intelligence Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on Jan. 30, 2025.
Trump’s rockiest Cabinet picks get spicy hearings
It was a rough few days for Donald Trump’s pick for Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The day before the confirmation hearings got underway, his cousin, Caroline Kennedy called him a “predator” and said the Senate should reject his nomination.
RFK Jr. went on to struggle through his appearance in front of the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday, botching answers to questions on Medicare and raising questions about his chances of being confirmed. In a second appearance on Thursday, this one in front of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, he had another rough go, clashing with Sen. Bernie Sanders over vaccine safety and effectiveness and stumbling over Medicare questions once again.
FBI head nominee Kash Patel had his own raucous hearing on Thursday, though he tried to smooth over some concerns about his fitness to lead by distancing himself from conspiracy theories he’d previously sympathized with, like QAnon. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse tore into Patel, saying “There is an unfathomable difference between a seeming facade being constructed around this nominee here today and what he has actually done and said in real life when left to his own devices.”
Nonetheless, both Kennedy and Patel could squeak through the Senate. If they do, Republicans would still face their biggest confirmation challenge. Director of National Intelligence pick Tulsi Gabbard was also put through the wringer on Thursday in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee. She faces, perhaps, the longest odds of any Trump Cabinet pick, and the GOP will likely struggle to confirm her in the days to come.