Two days af­ter an­nounc­ing plans to shut down an FDA lab de­vot­ed to en­sur­ing the US drug sup­ply re­mains safe and po­tent, the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has changed plans and will leave the lab open, End­points News has learned.

The St. Louis lab, known as the Of­fice of Test­ing and Re­search, is one of the drug agency’s most im­por­tant fa­cil­i­ties for en­sur­ing drugs are of high qual­i­ty. In ad­di­tion to its day-to-day work, the lab has been called in to in­ves­ti­gate high-pro­file drug safe­ty is­sues.

In 2008, for ex­am­ple, it led a probe in­to con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed sup­plies of the blood thin­ner he­parin, which like­ly killed dozens of Amer­i­cans and was even­tu­al­ly traced back to a sup­pli­er in Chi­na. More re­cent­ly, it led a probe in­to com­mon heart­burn med­ica­tions that were found to have un­safe lev­els of ni­trosamine, a car­cino­gen. That in­ves­ti­ga­tion helped lead to pop­u­lar prod­ucts like Zan­tac and re­lat­ed over-the-counter drugs be­ing pulled from shelves.

The FDA told staff on Mon­day that re­view­ers of med­ical prod­ucts and in­spec­tors of man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ties can­not take the buy­out of­fer cir­cu­lat­ed on Fri­day from HHS that would've pro­vid­ed as much as $25,000 in sev­er­ance, three FDA of­fi­cials con­firmed to End­points News.

The carve­outs for staff fund­ed by in­dus­try user fee dol­lars show the ex­tent to which the FDA and HHS are not tar­get­ing drug and de­vice re­view­ers in the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion's wider gov­ern­ment staffing cuts. The move al­so will help en­sure that all on­go­ing drug and de­vice re­view time­lines re­main on sched­ule.

The agency email on Mon­day, ac­cord­ing to the three sources, not­ed that "in­el­i­gi­ble po­si­tions" for the HHS buy­outs in­clude: "In­spec­tors and in­ves­ti­ga­tors in the Of­fice of In­spec­tion and In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­clud­ing po­si­tions with­in the Of­fice of Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tion; Re­view­ers in CDER, CBER, CDRH, CVM, CTP and OC of­fices; phys­i­cal se­cu­ri­ty po­si­tions; cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty po­si­tions; and all PHS Com­mis­sioned Corps Of­fi­cers."

Since Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump took of­fice, Elon Musk's De­part­ment of Gov­ern­ment Ef­fi­cien­cy has laid off thou­sands of gov­ern­ment work­ers through broad, sud­den cuts — some lat­er re­versed — that have thrown the op­er­a­tions of the gov­ern­ment in­to a pe­ri­od of un­cer­tain­ty.

That in­cludes plans to halve the In­ter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice, and the wide­spread purge of the US Agency for In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment, which will lose more than 80% of its staff. But for now, the FDA’s units re­spon­si­ble for re­view­ing new med­ical prod­ucts have re­mained un­touched — and may re­main so.

On Mon­day, days af­ter more than 83,000 HHS em­ploy­ees were of­fered a $25,000 buy­out pack­age to quit their jobs, FDA staff were told that work­ers in the agency’s units that re­view med­ical prod­ucts and in­spect man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ties wouldn’t be el­i­gi­ble, End­points News re­port­ed. Sub­se­quent­ly, two peo­ple fa­mil­iar with the agen­cy's op­er­a­tions told End­points that re­view­ers and in­spec­tors in the drug, bi­o­log­ics and de­vices cen­ters would like­ly be shield­ed from cuts.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump's nom­i­nees for NIH di­rec­tor and FDA com­mis­sion­er sailed through their re­spec­tive con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings this week, fac­ing few dif­fi­cult ques­tions and of­fer­ing few con­tro­ver­sial an­swers. But some of the views they ex­pressed may con­flict with the pri­or­i­ties of their new boss, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

While NIH nom­i­nee Jay Bhat­tacharya and FDA pick Mar­ty Makary made fre­quent men­tion of Kennedy's "Make Amer­i­ca Healthy Again" slo­gan, both po­si­tioned them­selves as more mod­er­ate on sev­er­al cru­cial is­sues, such as vac­cines. And on oth­er ma­jor Kennedy pri­or­i­ties, like the in­flu­ence of the phar­ma in­dus­try, it was­n't clear from the hear­ings what they think.

Here are six take­aways from the hear­ings, and what they in­di­cate — and what's still un­known — about drug and health pol­i­cy in the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

A fed­er­al judge on Wednes­day blocked the NIH from is­su­ing a cap on in­di­rect cost pay­ments for grantees af­ter find­ing that the chal­lengers are like­ly to show the cuts con­flict with the law.

Judge An­gel Kel­ley in Mass­a­chu­setts grant­ed a na­tion­wide pre­lim­i­nary in­junc­tion af­ter hear­ing ar­gu­ments last month in three sep­a­rate law­suits brought by 22 states, sev­er­al uni­ver­si­ties and or­ga­ni­za­tions rep­re­sent­ing schools and hos­pi­tals. Kel­ley had pre­vi­ous­ly is­sued a tem­po­rary re­strain­ing or­der, which pre­vent­ed the cuts from tak­ing ef­fect while she con­sid­ered the de­tails of the case.

The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment can ap­peal the pre­lim­i­nary in­junc­tion while the cas­es pro­ceed in dis­trict court. It’s un­clear whether it plans to do so at this time.