The emails began arriving at dawn to workers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“I regret to inform you that you are being affected by a reduction in force (RIF) action,” says one of the emails, which The Atlanta Journal-Constitution obtained Tuesday from current CDC employees. “After you receive this notice, you will be placed on administrative leave and will no longer have building access.”
The firings — part of a larger push by the Trump administration to shrink the federal government — cut a wide swath across the public health agency, in areas such as birth defects, sexually transmitted diseases, environmental health, violence prevention, tuberculosis and domestic HIV prevention has been decimated, according to a three-page outline by the AJC of the cuts obtained from a current employee.
While the layoffs had been anticipated since last week, the details and scope only came into focus Tuesday as employees were notified that their jobs were being eliminated.
About 10,000 people across the entire U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will be terminated. They include scientists, researchers, doctors and support staff. The CDC, which is a part of HHS, would lose about 2,400 people out of the approximate 12,000 who work there.
Some employees seemed stunned as they entered the CDC’s Atlanta office for what could be the last time.
“My wife is 38 weeks pregnant — we got approved for 12 weeks of parental leave but I’m not going to get any of that now,” CDC scientist Kevin Caron said as he walked toward his office Tuesday, having been told by contacts that employees could still get inside to retrieve their belongings.
Caron said his CDC research in recent years contributed to a paper published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine that explained how Americans who died after vaping were poisoned.
“People are walking around crying,” Caron said. “I don’t think anybody really has a full grasp of what’s happening.”
‘Devastating implications’
President Donald Trump and Department of Government Efficiency leader Elon Musk have said their efforts to downsize the federal government are aimed at rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in government.
“Over time, bureaucracies like HHS become wasteful and inefficient even when most of their staff are dedicated and competent civil servants,” Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a recent news release. “This overhaul will be a win-win for taxpayers and for those that HHS serves.”
But public health experts have previously told the AJC that the cuts could represent generational damage to health research and the elimination of infectious diseases. It will also have particular impact on metro Atlanta, as thousands of CDC employees work out of the agency’s two campuses here and lend support to state and local public health officials.
Barbara Marston stood somberly outside the CDC’s main entrance with a handful of other supporters. Marston, an infectious disease doctor who retired from the agency in 2022, has been helping organize rallies every Tuesday afternoon. She came out early Tuesday when she heard from friends that the large-scale layoffs were happening.
“This was terrible for them,” Marston said. “But these cuts are going to have devastating implications for the rest of the country.”
Dr. Carlos del Rio, a scientist on HIV and professor of global health and epidemiology at Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health, said the cuts were “severe and indiscriminate.”
“You will see problems in those areas that are being eliminated,” he said, such as HIV control. He said he respected the need for efficiency, but previous cuts have been done at the agency involving people within branches who know how the work is done. In contrast, he said, this was like deciding to lose weight by cutting off an arm.
He cited the outbreak of HIV in Scott County, Indiana, where the CDC went in and figured out it was happening among intravenous drug users.
“You never know when a fire is going to happen,” he said. “If a fire happens, you need to have a fire department.”
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
The firings on Tuesday are different from the mass cuts in February that targeted hundreds of “probationary” employees, promoted or hired within the last year or two. Those ran into instant legal problems and many had to be walked back.
News reports and the CDC workers who spoke to the AJC said the new layoffs had been expected last week, but were delayed when the Trump administration received pushback, including that some cuts on its list were still not done in a legally sustainable way.
While these latest layoffs were done with the intention of having more ability to withstand legal challenges, the process still has been rife with snags.
Workers cited endless dread and frustration at what they perceived as a ham-handed rollout — such as reading about staff updates in news reports while seeing little to no communication from those doing the cuts.
As of noon Tuesday, there was no official publicly available list of what had been cut or why.
The Trump administration has said it plans to consolidate agencies that oversee billions of dollars for addiction services and community health centers under a new office called the Administration for a Healthy America.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
The notices come just days after Trump moved to strip workers of their collective bargaining rights at HHS and other agencies throughout the government.
At the CDC, most employees are not unionized, but interest rose sharply this year as the Trump administration took steps to reduce the federal workforce. Roughly 2,000 CDC employees in Atlanta belonged to the American Federation of Government Employees local bargaining unit, with hundreds more being added who had petitioned to join in recent days.
‘Extraordinary waste’
Some areas of the agency targeted included employees who work to communicate science to the public, doctors and the health community; workers stopping HIV and tuberculosis; and the Injury Center, according to the outline and CDC employees who spoke to the AJC.
News reporting had presaged some of those cuts. For example, Kennedy Jr. had called out communications offices as an example of “extraordinary waste.”
Some CDC employees reject that claim, saying communications employees train for years to understand what types of people tend to get certain diseases and how best to reach them and advise them.
“This is people’s life’s work, behavioral and communications science work,” said one worker. “Diseases and conditions affect different people ... You have to find them and target your message for those people.”
Georgia lawmakers weighed in as well. U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff in a news release said “the Trump Administration’s war on the CDC continues with more reckless mass firings of thousands. This foolish attack on America’s preeminent public health agency leaves Americans exposed to deadly outbreaks.”
— The Associated Press and photographer Ben Hendren contributed to this article.
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