Federal health agencies were reeling Friday from the massive layoffs that appear to have particularly devastated the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, despite some terminations being rescinded Saturday.
The numbers are still sketchy, but reports Friday indicate that more than 4,000 federal workers were initially laid off. The Trump administration linked the layoffs to the ongoing government shutdown, which legal experts say is illegal. Unions representing federal employees have already filed a lawsuit against the move.
Of the reported 4,000 terminations, approximately 1,100 to 1,200 were among Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) employees. HHS is a massive department that houses crucial federal agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, among others. Before Trump's second term, the HHS workforce was about 82,000, but that was reduced to about 62,000 earlier this year due to initial budget cuts and efforts to oust officials.
While it is unclear where all the new cuts occurred, reports from anonymous and outside sources describe a major depletion of the CDC, an agency that has already been seriously injured and has lost significant numbers this year. The former leaders have accused the Trump administration of censoring its scientific work. In August, the Senate-confirmed director was dramatically ousted. And weeks earlier, it was targeted by a gunman who shot more than 500 bullets at its employees, killing a local police officer.
When the terminations were announced Friday, reports indicated that the terminations affected employees who produce the CDC's esteemed journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, employees who responded to the measles outbreaks in the U.S., others who responded to the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, employees of the Global Health Center and disease detectives from the Epidemic Intelligence Service.
