As layoff notices swept through the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on 10 October, Aryn Melton Backus thought she would be safe this time.
Then she received the email: she was part of a major reduction in force (RIF) during the US government shutdown. It wasn’t the first time she’d been fired from the CDC by email, nor the second.
Backus has been terminated and then reinstated three times this year.
Her experience demonstrates the inefficiencies and tumult at US health agencies as leaders continue cutting into the workforce and ending programs vital for Americans’ health.
The latest round of shutdown RIFs is illegal, according to the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which is among the unions representing federal workers that are suing the government to stop the layoffs. A quarter of the CDC has now been cut by multiple rounds of layoffs.
Some employees who had to work without pay through the shutdown received RIF notices; others who were furloughed learned they would never return to their jobs. Employees who were supposed to be protected from RIFs by an ongoing lawsuit received them anyway. The human resources department at CDC was brought back from unpaid furlough in order to process about 1,300 layoffs – and then their own, as the entire HR department was eliminated.
Some of the gutted departments are required by law to continue their work, despite having no employees. The ethics office and the institutional review board (IRB) were also ended, which means the CDC will no longer have oversight on ethical violations and research protocols.
The entire library staff at the CDC, an integral part of research and recommendations, was terminated. The Washington office, which developed policy briefings and provided information to Congress members, was eliminated as well.
The National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, the national health and nutrition examination survey, and the staff focused on suicide prevention also suffered layoffs.
The multiple cuts across the agency mean the CDC is not able to carry out much of its work, even as some employees remain, said Karen Remley, who previously ran the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities and was a state health official in Virginia.
In April, for instance, the entire team behind the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (Prams) was cut, which means a critical tool for understanding maternal and child health is now missing.
“You can’t take out Prams and keep the registry and have all that work happen,” Remley said. “This artificial separating and splitting really means the work on the local level stops.”
Meanwhile, CDC employees have endured attacks and harassment.
On 8 August, a gunman fired 500 rounds of ammunition at the CDC headquarters, killing David Rose, an officer, and traumatizing agency employees and their families.
Health agency employees have been doxed, with their identities and personal information revealed. Matthew Buckham, Kennedy’s acting chief of staff, was co-founder of the group that maintains a “DEI Watch List” targeting HHS employees. The agency has also been roiled by high-profile departures.
“At the highest level of leadership in the CDC, there are no public health or medical professionals left to help guide CDC recommendations,” said Abigail Tighe, a former CDC employee and founding member of the National Public Health Coalition, which held a recent press conference where Backus and other former CDC employees spoke.
“Billions in contracts and direct funding to state and local public health agencies has been canceled or clawed back, and the American people are cued up to suffer. It is hard to succinctly put into words what the decimation of the CDC means for everyday Americans.”
The first round of layoffs at CDC came on Valentine’s day. Probationary employees – who were in the first year or two of their jobs, either because they had been recently hired or had moved to new positions – along with established senior employees received notices.
A judge ruled in September that the probationary terminations went too far and some of the employees were reinstated and placed on administrative leave.
In the meantime, RIF notices went out on 1 April, eliminating entire offices such as the office on smoking and health, where Backus worked. She didn’t even receive the notice at first because her access to the CDC network, including email, had been cut off.
The lawsuit specifically prevents employees like Backus from being reorganized into new offices or terminated from the agency, she said. That’s why she thought she would be safe this time – but she still received a third layoff notice. That notice was rescinded after less than 24 hours. About 700 employees were reinstated, while 600 remain terminated.
“I still remain on administrative leave, unable to do my job,” Backus said. “My situation just highlights the chaos and confusion that federal employees have experienced over the past year. I’m stuck in limbo, following court cases, gathering information, and trying to figure out what my next steps should be.”
Charlotte Kent, former editor-in-chief of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), said: “We have so many people who, if they’ve been [un-RIFed], have been on administrative leave. We have the inefficiency of so many government resources, our taxpayer dollars, going to fight the illegal activities that have been done by the administration.”
The MMWR was among the departments completely gutted and then reinstated – which was particularly surprising, because the highly regarded scientific journal was specifically included in the president’s budget request for the first time this year.
“To have it cut at this point is just shocking,” Kent said.
“It’s like being in a strange game where there’s no rules,” said one former CDC employee who was RIFed on 10 October and spoke anonymously to avoid reprisal from the Trump administration. “It’s honestly like Squid Games – we don’t know what’s going to happen next.”
John Brooks, who retired last year from the CDC after 26 years and served as the chief medical officer for several emergency responses, said the RIFs demonstrated a “stunning level of incompetency”. Firing the CDC Washington staff means “Congress no longer has a means of direct access to the agency it funds when it needs information or briefings”.
The Trump administration reportedly says about 700 of the terminations were a coding error.
“It is clear to us that this was not a coding error,” said Tighe. “This RIF was carried out just as all the other ones have been, where they fire as many people as they think they can get away with, there’s public outcry, there’s outcry from congressional members and then they bring back the things that they think people cannot get over.”
She called the firings “an intentional attack on the American people and the public’s health”.
“Our country is on an uncertain and frankly frightening path,” Tighe said. “We would love to see Congress step in.”
