Fired CDC workers’ fates hang in the balance after week of chaos

After a week of chaos and confusion, as described by employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the fate of more than 600 workers hangs in the balance now that a federal judge has temporarily blocked their terminations.

The saga began Friday, when around 1,300 CDC employees they were told they had been released. Less than a day later, about 700 of them were informed that they had received the notifications in error. The rest appeared unemployed until Wednesday, when the judge ordered the Trump administration not to lay off any additional workers during the government shutdown and not implement layoffs made since last week.

All of this has happened while many CDC employees remain unemployed.

The Trump administration did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment on the decision, which followed a lawsuit filed by two unions representing federal employees. A hearing is scheduled for later this month.

The more than 600 CDC employees whose layoffs have not been reversed include some staffers who managed the agency’s chronic disease programs — an area of ​​research that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has pledged to prioritize — as well as others who worked on a key survey measuring the health and nutrition of the U.S. population, according to a union representing CDC workers, a group advocacy from former agency staffers and several current and former employees familiar with the subject. The group also includes some mental health professionals within the agency who supported staff after the August shooting at CDC headquarters.

The layoffs occurred “across the board, across multiple programs, particularly in the areas of communications, policy and operations,” said a spokesperson for the union, American Federation of Government Employees Local 2883.

The Trump administration linked the layoffs to the shutdown.

“Some HHS employees have received reduction notices as a direct result of the Democratic-led government shutdown,” Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon said in a statement before the judge’s ruling.

“HHS under the Biden administration has become a bloated bureaucracy, increasing its budget by 38% and its workforce by 17%. All HHS employees receiving reduction notices have been designated non-essential by their respective divisions,” he said.

Nixon disputed reports from the union and former CDC employees that some staff members working on the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey had been fired. He said HHS reversed those layoffs.

The cuts came as Kennedy continues to reshape HHS. As health secretary, he fired the CDC director — just 29 days after the Senate confirmed her — halted work on mRNA vaccines and moved to dramatically shrink and restructure his department’s agencies.

Friday’s layoffs (the ones that weren’t reversed) affected some CDC employees who helped process requests from states to investigate pressing public health issues, such as overdoses and drownings, according to an agency employee familiar with the matter.

Much of the agency’s human resources staff was also laid off; his entire Washington office, which communicates with Congress; and its ethics office, which reviews conflicts of interest of CDC leaders and advisory committee members.

Dr. Demeter Daskalakis, who resigned in August as director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said the loss of the ethics office means reduced oversight from the agency’s vaccine advisory committee. Kennedy fired the old panel members in June and appointed new ones, many of whom expressed skepticism about Covid vaccines.

“As someone outside of the CDC, I’m concerned that these people have basic conflicts of interest,” Daskalakis said Wednesday during a press call hosted by Defend America Action, a nonprofit that opposes the Trump administration’s policies. “We’ll never know because they’re no longer going to be evaluated by the ethics office. So that’s another pretty big red flag.”

The CDC bore much of the “workforce reductions” announced Friday by the Trump administration, when more than 4,000 federal employees were laid off across seven departments. More than half were from HHS and the Treasury Department, according to a court filing.

Yolanda Jacobs, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 2883, said human resources workers who were furloughed due to the shutdown were brought back in an effort to send layoff notices Friday, including to themselves.

“For almost a year now, our members have been bullied. They’ve been tormented. They’ve been left in a constant state of panic about job security,” Jacobs said.

Vice President JD Vance told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that the layoffs were necessary to help preserve other essential benefits for Americans.

Democrats, however, said the shutdown did not require firing federal workers or give the administration new powers to implement such cuts.

Although Nixon said a “systems problem” was to blame for the layoff notices that were sent out and then later rescinded, some current and former CDC staffers questioned that explanation and suggested the latest cuts were part of a broader pattern of reckless and illegal layoffs.

“It looked like intentional chaos for the sake of chaos, so no one knew what was going on,” said one employee who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation.

CDC staff who received layoff notices described massive confusion over which programs were targeted, with one employee saying he had to piece together the puzzle through Reddit forums and text messages.

“These layoffs were not a problem. This was not an innocent mistake. This round of layoffs, like all others the CDC has seen over the past 10 months, was an intentional attack on the American people and public health,” Abigail Tighe, a former CDC employee who was fired in a previous round of layoffs, said at a news conference Tuesday. Tighe is now executive director of the National Public Health Coalition, an advocacy group made up of former CDC staffers.

Since Trump took office in January, the CDC has seen three rounds of layoffs. A union spokesperson said the agency has lost 24% of its total workforce — or just over 3,000 employees — since January due to layoffs, retirements or people accepting buyout offers.

Aryn Melton Backus, a former employee of the CDC’s Office on Tobacco and Health, said she has received three termination letters from the agency so far this year. The first occurred during the Trump administration’s firing of probationary employees in February, she said, followed by a second in April when HHS massively reduced the CDC’s workforce.

Backus said she is still on administrative leave because of a lawsuit challenging the legality of the firings. However, on Friday her team received another round of layoff notices, which were ultimately rescinded, she said.

“We do important work to help prevent tobacco use, help smokers quit and monitor new tobacco products,” Backus said. “Now that work has been abruptly stopped.”

Other employees who were initially laid off last week and then brought back include staffers focused on suicide prevention and responding to Ebola and measles outbreaks, according to the National Public Health Coalition.

Morale at the agency remains very low.

“My office had two bullet holes,” said Katie Fullerton, who spent 15 years monitoring infectious diseases at the CDC before resigning in August, shortly after a gunman opened fire at the agency’s headquarters.

“That, combined with the thousands of paper clippings we received from this administration, I decided I didn’t have five years left,” she added. Leaving before turning 20 means Fullerton will not be eligible for federal health benefits.