What happened
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said yesterday he will oversee a massive restructuring of his department. The plan shrinks HHS's 28 divisions into 15 and cuts 20,000 full-time jobs, or roughly a quarter of the workforce at the department that regulates prescription drugs, manages Medicare and epidemics and conducts medical research, among other public health functions.

Who said what
The "hushed-and-hurried" reorganization plan "shocked many people tasked with making it happen," Politico said. It followed "weeks of secretive work carried out by Trump health officials" and Elon Musk's DOGE team to "drastically" shrink HHS and impose "greater political control over its priorities."

Kennedy said in a video announcing the changes that he was "realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic," doing "a lot more — at a lower cost to the taxpayer." Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) called Kennedy's more-for-less claim an "absurd suggestion" that "defies common sense," saying he and Trump were "wrecking vital health agencies with the precision of a bull in a china shop" during "worsening nationwide outbreaks of bird flu and measles, not to mention a fentanyl epidemic."

What next?
Kennedy has his "reorganization, but we'll have more conversations, let me just put it that way," said Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), chair of the health committee. The layoffs were scheduled to take place in late May.

What happened
Warmer global temperatures have reduced the amount of water being stored in soil, lakes, rivers and snowpack, shifting that groundwater to the oceans and subsequently altering the axis the Earth spins around, researchers reported yesterday in the journal Science. The depletion of moisture in the soil is likely irreversible in our lifetimes and will hit agriculture particularly hard, the scientists said.

Researchers at NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center also said yesterday that the amount of sea ice shrank to a record low last year. And the World Meteorological Organization reported last week that the past 10 years were the 1o hottest in recorded history, with 2024 being the warmest.

Who said what
The rise in global sea levels is "largely fed by the melting of glaciers and ice sheets," The Washington Post said. But in the past two decades, "the rate of water dumping into the oceans was bigger from terrestrial water storage than from what we normally think of as the biggest source, which was the melting of Greenland," said study co-author Clark Wilson, a geophysicist at the University of Texas at Austin.

The study also found a "deeper truth about the land," that its water table isn't being replenished even after "dramatic rainfall" and floods, The Associated Press said. "It seems that lands lost their elasticity to recover the previous level," said study co-author Dongryeol Ryu, a University of Melbourne hydrologist.

What next?
With soil moisture levels depleted for the foreseeable future, the Post said, researchers advise that "societies must learn to practice smarter and sustainable water resource management."