CDC workers ask Congress, where is 'radical transparency' now?

WASHINGTON — Laid-off employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are asking Congress to procure details from the Trump administration on the extent of agency firings and rationale for targeting certain departments.

Roughly 1,300 CDC employees were laid off Friday as part of the shutdown-related reduction in force, according to data compiled by the CDC workers’ union, with about half of them reinstated by Monday.

The chaotic layoffs have crippled America’s public health agency, workers say, leaving them in the dark as the administration has provided little additional detail. And while President Donald Trump had said that layoffs would be “Democrat oriented,” employees are puzzled how the chronic-disease staff, the National Center for Health Statistics and the agency’s library fit that mold.

Former agency employees say public pressure forced the rehiring of some staff after the administration said a coding error led to too many firings.

“It is clear to us that this was not a coding error,” Abigail Tighe, a former CDC employee who founded a coalition of terminated public health workers called Fired but Fighting, told reporters Tuesday. The agency’s human resources department, laid off on Friday, had to be brought back to process the reductions in force.

Congress needs transparency around what the administration did and why, Tighe and others say.

“They’re talking about the incompetence, and that’s one of the reasons why DOGE was started, and yet we have so much inefficiency in what the government is doing now,” Karen Remley, former director of the CDC National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, told reporters on Tuesday. Remley resigned from the CDC at the beginning of the second Trump administration.

Health and Human Services Department spokesperson Andrew Nixon declined to provide further detail or confirm the number of layoffs.

“All HHS employees receiving reduction-in-force notices were designated non-essential by their respective divisions,” Nixon said in a statement.

Remley said there is an extreme lack of transparency from the administration, despite a promise by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to provide “radical transparency” at his confirmation hearing.

Congress can’t use its powers to bring back fired employees, but it can demand information. Workers said Congress needs to conduct oversight and work to claw back public health funding held up by the administration.

“We definitely are looking forward to having Congress stand up for us, making sure that this can’t happen in the future, that you can’t just decide on a whim to obliterate large segments of an agency with no prior approval, no assessment of the needs of that agency, and placing, you know, the employees of those agencies in peril,” Yolanda Jacobs, president of CDC union American Federation of Government Employees Local 2883, told reporters Tuesday.

The weekend reductions in force impacted all branches of the agency, according to fired workers, but were largely concentrated in the Washington, D.C., office and the CDC library.

The agency’s D.C. office worked directly with Congress to prepare information for lawmakers ahead of hearings and when crafting legislation. Washington office staff also facilitated lawmaker communication with public health officials across the nation, not just the Atlanta office.

The CDC library gives employees access to all medical studies and preprints and performs literature searches for scientists conducting scientific reviews. It’s not immediately clear if the library has been eliminated, or only if staff has been fired and subscriptions allowed to lapse.

But scientists said regardless, the layoffs would make life extremely difficult for researchers.

“Without that, people are kneecapped,” Brooks said. “So this is really removing the capacity, or limiting access to the capacity for experts to remain experts in their field.”

Deep cuts

The agency also saw deep cuts to its work on chronic disease, global health and the Center for Health Statistics. John Brooks, former chief medical officer for CDC’s Division of HIV Prevention and its emergency responses to COVID-19 and mpox, compared the biosecurity and disease prevention work of CDC to the work the military does to prevent threats to the nation’s safety.

“The loss of senior leadership that you’ve heard about as well as seasoned experts at CDC, is like losing generals and their senior lieutenants who provide the strategic planning training and support needed by our troops to effectively repel physical enemies,” Brooks said.

The American Federation of Government Employees, along with several other unions, is challenging the administration’s authority to conduct mass layoffs during a government shutdown, and has asked for a temporary restraining order to block any firings.

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California is holding a hearing Wednesday in the case, filed against the Office of Management and Budget over firing furloughed employees.

Many who received RIF notices are struggling.

A senior CDC employee who wished to remain anonymous told CQ Roll Call he was placed on administrative leave on Friday, which could lead to his removal from federal service. The employee, who said he voted for Trump three times, lamented that the lack of clarity has caused anxiety for him and his family as he’s gone without pay. He supports his wife and kids, including two who are in college.

“I guess CDC is a Democratic organization. I didn’t know that until now,” the employee said, referring to Trump’s remarks.

“It just sucks what they’re doing,” he continued. “The power of it seems over-abusive and unnecessary.”

He had been asked to perform some duties during the government shutdown, until he received the administrative leave notice.

The employee had also been affected by the first round of RIFs carried out in April, and was close to taking another position outside of the CDC when his RIF was rescinded in June and he was instructed to return to his position. He is entitled to pay during the administrative leave, but because of the government shutdown, he will go without a paycheck until further notice.

“I provide benefits and a salary for our life,” he said. “I can’t not work.”

Employees are still reeling from the shooting at the Atlanta campus. The employee said that after the shooting he felt on edge going into work.

“I’d scan the fence line to see if there’s anybody out there with a gun,” he said.

Another RIF’d employee who wished to remain anonymous said that when Trump made no public statement about the shooting, “That’s when I realized they really just didn’t care about what happened to us as an agency.”

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—Sandhya Raman contributed to this report.

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