The Trump administration is scrambling to rehire Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staffers who were laid off as part of the president's pledge to slash the federal workforce in response to the government shutdown.
Friday's layoffs were part of the more than four thousand jobs the Trump administration has cut, according to the government. WashingtonPost. Many of those released worked to combat critical diseases, including measles and Ebola.
After the New York Times and other media outlets reported on the CDC staff layoffs, a federal health official told the outlet that many of the people laid off had been wrongly fired and would be brought back.
The official spoke to the Times anonymously.
The CDC officials cut included the “top two leaders of the federal measles response team,” even as the country grapples with a measles outbreak, the Times reports.
The CDC has been hit in several ways since the start of the Trump administration. (Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)
The times reports that cuts to the agency include:
· Personnel working to combat an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
· A team that supports infectious disease surveillance.
· Agency leaders who oversaw immunization and respiratory diseases.
· Part of the CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Unit, which is sent to the scene of the outbreak and described as “disease detectives.”
· Members of a team that compiles the agency's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which documents the CDC's various recommendations and updates on the outbreak.
· At the agency's forecasting center, which helps manage public health emergencies, the government eliminated a division focused on technology and innovation.
“This will be devastating for Americans and for the world community,” said Dr. Debra Houry, who previously served as the CDC's chief medical officer before resigning in August in protest of the administration's policies, told the newspaper.
She said the Trump administration was “dismantling public health.”
“If you eliminate the ability to respond to outbreaks like this, people's lives are at risk,” she added.
Officials speak to the Times said that some of the staff who worked on the MMWR publication were “wrongfully dismissed due to misclassification” of their job codes and that those employees would be reinstated. The source also reportedly said that anyone committed to fighting measles or Ebola would be reinstated.
The number of employees being brought back could be in the hundreds, according to the newspaper, although they did not specify when these individuals would return to work.
Trump and his Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, have treated the CDC with general derision since the president returned to power.
Director Robert F Kennedy, Jr. of the Department of Health and Human Services has made sweeping changes to the agency. (AP)
After a gunman shot at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta to express his opposition to the COVID-19 vaccine — a vaccine that Kennedy was outspokenly critical of before Trump gave him a position in his administration — Trump said nothing in defense of the agency.
Since his appointment as head of DHS, Kennedy has fired the entire 17-member CDC vaccine advisory board and replaced it with people sympathetic to his views on vaccines. The same month as the shooting, Kennedy fired CDC Director Susan Monarez.
Monarez said she was fired for refusing to endorse Kennedy's vaccination policies without first seeking a scientific review of his ideas.
This also isn't the first time a happy-go-lucky Trump administration has fired people working on Ebola prevention. When Tesla CEO Elon Musk was still in the president's good graces and running the government's Department of Efficiency, he accidentally fired members of USAID who were working on Ebola relief and prevention projects.
After admitting the mistake, the team was reportedly rehired.
The independent has contacted the White House and the CDC for comment.
