Layoffs start at CDC, targeting probationary staff

The Trump administration is slashing about 1,300 employees, or 10%, of the workforce at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to two agency employees who requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak for the agency. Staff were notified Friday of the cuts.

The layoffs are targeted at probationary employees — a broad category that includes recent hires and long-time staffers who were recently moved to a new position in the CDC.

“This is absolutely tragic,” said one current CDC employee. “If we lose these people we lose important capacity and in a very real sense we lose our CDC future.”

Another current CDC staffer told NPR the cuts were coming at the direction of the Department of Health and Human Services — now under the leadership of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was confirmed as secretary on Thursday.

In response to a request for comment on the cuts, Andrew Nixon, director of communications at HHS, wrote in an email to NPR: “HHS is following the Administration’s guidance and taking action to support the President’s broader efforts to restructure and streamline the federal government. This is to ensure that HHS better serves the American people at the highest and most efficient standard.”

Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, says these cuts “are very destructive to the core infrastructure of public health.”

“This happens when you do indiscriminate, poorly thought-out layoffs,” he says.

The cuts also hit the Epidemic Intelligence Service officer corps, where all those in the first year of their service were laid off, one of the CDC employees said. Members of the service, whom the CDC calls “disease detectives,” are often dispatched to investigate disease outbreaks and public health threats in the U.S. and overseas.

Friday’s layoffs are the latest in a series that started this week at CDC. Earlier this week, contractors in various divisions of the agency were let go, and around 400 employees accepted the “Fork in the Road” offer, according to a former CDC staffer with knowledge of the situation.

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Edited by Carmel Wroth and Scott Hensley.