By Nick Valencia | October 13, 2025
ATLANTA — Over the weekend, the Trump administration scrambled to rehire hundreds of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientists after laying them off. Insiders described it as a “chaotic” and “targeted” gutting of key divisions at the nation’s top public-health agency.
“This feels like a surprisingly precise and targeted attack meant to inflict maximum pain,” one CDC source told Nick Valencia News. “We’re all wondering how much more the agency can take.”
According to multiple health professionals who spoke to Nick Valencia News, the sweeping “reduction in force” notices were issued late Friday to more than 1,200 CDC employees, including epidemiologists, outbreak responders, and policy staff.
By dawn Saturday, some began receiving abrupt reinstatement emails.
“The employees were sent incorrect notifications, which was fixed last night and this morning with a technical correction,” a senior administration official told The New York Times.
But inside the agency, the sense of disbelief ran deep.
An Agency in Free Fall
The firings, first reported by Politico and Reuters, hit nearly every major CDC division — including the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), the Global Health Center, and the Division of Violence Prevention Policy.
Among those briefly terminated were scientists managing measles and Ebola responses and staff behind the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), the agency’s flagship scientific journal.
A second source with direct knowledge of internal meetings confirmed the extent of the confusion.
“They’re reversing about half the RIFs,” the source said. “At the CDC leadership meeting Saturday afternoon, it was shared that 1,257 people were RIF’d across most centers, institutes, and offices. That number may not be final.”
“It’s a real cluster,” said another longtime CDC staffer. “People just keep thinking that it can’t possibly get worse — and then it does.”
Cuts That Felt Cruel
According to internal messages and interviews with multiple employees, the layoffs wiped out entire offices devoted to staff safety and support.
“The fact that they cut the Occupational Health and Safety Office and the Worklife Wellness Office is just cruel,” one insider said. “They’re the offices whose mission is to take care of CDC staff.”
“They also targeted the CDC Library, which supports researchers across the agency,” the source said, before adding that the layoffs went beyond technical blunders.
“There were huge cuts of policy staff. They cut the entire Washington office that deals with congressional affairs and advocates for CDC during the budget process. So cutting it takes away our voice.”
“All of these cuts were meant to hamper the mission and silence,” they added.
A Pattern of Chaos
The latest blunder is only the most recent in a string of upheavals at the CDC since Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took control of the agency earlier this year.
In April, roughly a third of the CDC’s workforce was eliminated and later rehired. In August, a gunman fired more than 500 rounds at the agency’s Atlanta headquarters — followed weeks later by the forced resignation of CDC Director Dr. Susan Monarez.
Public-health leaders say the weekend’s firings could inflict lasting damage on the nation’s disease-response infrastructure.
For those inside the CDC, the latest reversal did little to reassure. To those still standing, it feels like a not so slow-motion collapse of the nation’s leading public health agency.
