More than half of CDC staffers recently fired by Trump administration have been reinstated

[Thiệu Ngô]

Hundreds of staff fired from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention late Friday have been reinstated, according to the American Federation of Government Employees.

By Brenda Goodman ,Meg Tirrell

After a new round of layoff notices sent late Friday night to around 1,300 workers at the CDC, approximately 700 were reinstated on Saturday, while about 600 remain laid off, according to the union, which 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.

Among reinstated employees are staff that publish the agency’s flagship journal, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, according to Dr. Debra Houry, who recently resigned as the agency’s chief medical officer and deputy director for program and science. Houry and other high-level CDC officials resigned in August in protest over the firing of recently confirmed CDC Director Dr. Susan Monarez.

Athalia Christie, the incident commander for the measles response, was among hundreds of employees mistakenly fired on Friday. The annual total of measles cases in the US – now up to 1,563 cases since January – is the highest by a significant margin since measles was declared eliminated in America a quarter-century ago.

Staff were also 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, said Dr. Brian Castrucci, who is president and chief executive officer of the de Beaumont Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for public health workers.

Staff and officers at the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service who were able to check their emails have also received notices that their firings were in error, according to a CDC official with knowledge of the situation who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation.

Epidemic Intelligence Service officers, also known as “disease detectives,” are often the first to respond to disease threats when they arise.

“We think all staff and all officers” are back, the official said.

The mistakenly fired employees were sent incorrect notifications because of a coding error on the notices, according to an HHS official. The employees who got the miscoded notifications were all told about the glitch on Friday or Saturday, the person said.

“It’s pure managerial incompetence,” said Dr. Nirav Shah, who resigned earlier this year as principal deputy director of the CDC. “I used to think that chaos was the byproduct of this managerial incompetence. Now I start to wonder whether the chaos is the point.”

Staff at CDC’s Washington office, in its Violence Prevention programs, and in the Office of the Director of the Injury Center, remain separated from the agency as part of the latest round of the Trump administration’s Reduction in Force initiatives. In total, the cuts total about 600 positions.

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, said Shah, who is currently a visiting professor at Colby College in Maine.

“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.

President Donald Trump said late Friday afternoon that he planned to fire “a lot” of federal workers in retaliation for the government shutdown, vowing to target those deemed to be aligned with the Democratic Party.

“We figure they started this thing, so they should be Democrat-oriented,” Trump said, placing blame for the shutdown on Democratic lawmakers. Trump did not provide details on what qualified the affected workers as “Democrat-oriented.”

The legality of firing federal workers during a government shutdown is also in question. Shortly after Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought posted “The RIFs have begun” on X on Friday AFGE replied “The lawsuit has been filed.”

A court filing in that case indicates 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.