‘Bloodbath’: Journalists Report Trump Administration’s Massive CDC Firings Will Be Felt Worldwide
(AP Photo/Brynn Anderson, File)
Journalists reported that the Trump administration’s massive CDC layoffs will be felt worldwide as “potentially important outbreaks” have the potential to now go undetected.
The administration began laying off dozens of employees on Friday night, including high-ranking scientists, at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, as part of its latest round of federal layoffs during the government shutdown.
President Donald Trump promised mass federal worker layoffs on “Democrat Programs” as punishment for the shutdown, as recommended by the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought.
On Friday, Vought posted “The RIFs have begun,” on X, using the acronym for “reductions in force,” as the administration began laying off more than 4,000 workers with seven federal agencies.
According to The New York Times, “Layoff notices landed in the email inboxes of C.D.C. employees shortly before 9 p.m. Eastern time on Friday, notifying employees that their duties had been deemed unnecessary or ‘virtually identical’ to those being performed elsewhere in the agency. Scientists, including leaders, in offices addressing respiratory diseases, chronic diseases, injury prevention and global health were among those affected.”
The Washington Post’s health reporter Lena Sun posted that CDC staff members described the layoffs as a “bloodbath.”
Among those RIFd, she wrote, was “leadership of the center for immunization and respiratory diseases; leadership of global health center; leadership of the measles outbreak response, Center for Forecasting and Analytics, all of CDC Washington, Office of Human Resources, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control,” as well as “the CDC’s 2023 and 2024 class of civilian EIS officers known as its main disease detectives…These are the people who are typically the first responders in an outbreak.”
CNN’s Jake Tapper quoted “experts in public health” saying “this will have a huge impact on health officials throughout the country, and even the world.”
The Bulwark’s Sam Stein dubbed the layoffs a “Friday night massacre,” a sentiment echoed by The New York Times’s Sheryl Gay Stolberg.
