Hundreds of staff members that were fired by the Trump Administration from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been reinstated.
Hundreds of staff members that were fired from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) by the Trump Administration have officially been reinstated, according to the American Federation of Government Employees.
Late Friday night, a round of layoff notices were sent to around 1,300 workers at the CDC. On Saturday, about 700 were reinstated while about 600 remain laid off, according to the union that represents federal workers.
“The employees who received incorrect notifications were never separated from the agency and have all been notified that they are not subject to the reduction in force,” said Andrew Nixon, director of communications for the US Department of Health and Human Services, according to CNN.
Dr. Debra Houry, who recently resigned as the CDC’s chief medical officer and deputy director from program and science, said that among the individuals reinstated were staff that publish the agency’s flagship journal.
Dr. Brian Castrucci, president and chief executive officer of the de Beaumont Foundation, a nonprofit that advocated for public health workers, told CNN about other groups of employees who were also reinstated.
“Staff were reinstated at the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, the Global Health Center, and the Public Health Infrastructure Center, which manages more than $3 billion in grants to 107 state and local governments to help build local public health workforces.”
Beyond the firings, multiple hourly and high-level CDC officials resigned back in August in protest over the firing of CDC Director Dr. Susan Monarez.
Athalia Christie, the incident commander for the measles response, was one of the employees who was mistakenly fired, while the annual total of measles cases in the US rose up to 1,563 cases since January.
According to a CDC official, staff and officers at the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service received notices that their firings were an error.
“We think all [Epidemic Intelligence Service] staff and all officers are back,” the anonymous official stated.
According to an HHS official, the mistakenly fired employees were sent incorrect notification due to a coding error, and the employees who received these notifications were informed of the glitch on Friday and Saturday.
“It’s pure managerial incompetence. I used to think that chaos was the byproduct of this managerial incompetence. Now I start to wonder whether the chaos is the point,” said Dr. Nirav Shah, who resigned earlier this year as principal deputy director of the CDC.
Staff at the CDC’s Washington office in both its Violence Prevention programs and in the Office of the Director of the Injury Center are separate from the agency when it comes to the latest round of the Trump administration’s Reduction in Force initiatives, which cut around 600 positions. Shah explained this impact will not go unnoticed throughout the US.
“The impact of these job losses may not be immediately apparent to people going about their day-to-day lives, but they leave the country less prepared.”
“These cuts will mean that when the next health crisis comes along, precious days, weeks, months will be spent getting ready when we should have been ready,” Shah said.
In response to the government shutdown, Trump stated last week that he planned to fire “a lot” of federal workers and target those who are deemed to be aligned with the Democratic Party.
“We figure they started this thing, so they should be Democrat-oriented,” Trump said, while he blamed Democratic lawmakers for the shutdown.
There are a lot of questions regarding the legality of firing federal workers during a government shutdown.
Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought posted “The RIFs have begun” on X on Friday, and AFGE replied “The lawsuit has been filed.”
A court filing in that case shows more than 4,100 federal workers were impacted by the cuts at HHS as well as the departments of Commerce, Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Homeland Security and Treasury.
“My message for the CDC staff is the work they do has never been more important,” Shah said.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
