In the second week of the U.S. government shutdown, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notified some 1,300 employees they would be laid off – then rescinded hundreds of those notices within hours, a person familiar with the matter said.
The Trump administration is set to lay off entire offices and hundreds of CDC workers as part of mass job cuts during the federal shutdown, four sources told Reuters on Saturday.
A crowd-sourced list from CDC employees, reviewed by Reuters, suggested several units, including the entire Washington office, were targeted for termination. Two sources within the CDC and two at other health agencies confirmed the list’s validity.
HHS Says Cuts Target ‘non-Essential’ Workers
The White House and CDC did not respond to requests for comment. President Donald Trump on Friday blamed Democrats for the latest round of layoffs, which extend across the U.S. government, following through on his shutdown-related threats.
Around 400 CDC staff reported receiving notices indicating their entire units had been laid off, totaling an estimated 1,300 job losses, said one of the sources familiar with data on the layoffs.
But soon after, 90 staffers at units employing 700 total people confirmed their notices had been reversed by Saturday evening, said the person, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The cuts targeted only workers deemed “non-essential” by their units, said a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the Atlanta-based CDC.
“HHS continues to close wasteful and duplicative entities, including those that are at odds with the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda,” HHS Communications Director Andrew Nixon said in a statement.
Among the CDC workers initially cut were staff responsible for the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a critical vehicle for disseminating public health findings. That unit, along with employees at the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases and early-career epidemiologists involved in outbreak investigations, had their dismissals reversed, the person said.
CDC Faces Kennedy Criticism
CDC employees at units responsible for workplace safety, human resources, the CDC library and the Washington office have not reported indications of reversals.
Saturday’s reversal is not the first time the CDC has changed course on job cuts. Earlier this year, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. oversaw the dismissal of 2,400 employees, only to rehire 942 of them months later.
He has repeatedly criticized the CDC, calling it “the most corrupt government agency.”
Kennedy, who has long promoted vaccine misinformation, gutted the CDC’s independent vaccine advisory panel and oversaw the ouster of its director a month into her tenure, as part of his wider efforts to remake the nation’s vaccine policies.
Public health experts say his work as a public figure has contributed to declining immunization rates and exposed a growing number of youth to preventable diseases like measles.
(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; Additional reporting by Ananya Palyekar in Bengaluru; Editing by Tom Hogue, Sergio Non and William Mallard)
