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A general view of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.Tami Chappell | Reuters
The Trump administration on Saturday terminated hundreds of employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including fellows responsible for key public health roles, according to two sources at the agency who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern over retaliation.
Among them were about two dozen workers who made up the Laboratory Leadership Service, or LLS, a group responsible for training public health laboratory staffers and supporting outbreak response efforts. The two-year fellowship program launched in 2015, focusing on laboratory safety and regulatory compliance.
“We have come up with a new slogan for LLS: ‘the disease detectors.’ If you’re not testing, you don’t know what disease is there,” a current fellow, who was among those who received termination notices, told NBC News.
Termination emails, which were sent to LLS staff members Saturday evening, cited poor performance as the reason for the firings, even though most of the dismissed employees have “excellent” performance reviews, a midlevel CDC official said.
Multiple outlets reported that a larger sister program at CDC called the Epidemic Intelligence Service, or EIS, known as the agency’s “disease detectives,” was expected to be cut significantly, as well. As of Sunday, though, the two officials who spoke to NBC News had not heard of firings at EIS. One, a senior CDC official, said everyone who was going to be terminated had been notified by Sunday.
“Even if EIS was spared, there are multiple other fellowships that were not, and that’s a pipeline for the next generation of CDC leaders,” the senior official said. “We’re being cut off at the knees. It is going to cripple public health for decades.”
Other departments that had cuts included the Presidential Management Fellows, which aims to develop future public health leaders, and the Public Health Associate Program, which assigns fellows to local health agencies, the two officials said.
The termination process has been marked by chaos and a lack of transparency.
Almost two weeks ago, the Office of Personnel Management assigned CDC leadership to look through a list of employees who were in probationary or term-limited positions — including new directors, fellows and highly skilled noncitizen scientists — and designate each as “must be retained,” “mission critical” or “not mission critical.” According to the two CDC officials, the lists did not appear to have been used in the ultimate firing decisions.
Representatives for the White House, the CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
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In recent years, LLS fellows have assisted with dengue fever testing in American Samoa and Oropouche virus testing in Florida. In 2020, the group oversaw Covid-19 testing for thousands of Arizona residents.
The LLS fellows who received the termination notice said their co-workers were less concerned about their jobs than about what the moves signaled for public health.
“A lot of us, we could have gone to more lucrative careers,” said the fellow, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern of compromising their remaining weeks of paid leave. “We could have worked for pharma. We could have worked for biotech or something like that and made so much more money. But we’re all passionate for public health and just want to see public health succeed.”
The dismissal messages were sent the day after the Trump administration informed CDC leaders of plans to fire nearly 1,300 probationary employees at the agency, roughly one-tenth of its total workforce.
A representative for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, previously said the cuts were a part of the administration’s larger effort to reduce the size of the federal workforce.
“HHS is following the Administration’s guidance and taking action to support the President’s broader efforts to restructure and streamline the federal government. This is to ensure that HHS better serves the American people at the highest and most efficient standard,” Andrew Nixon, the department’s director of communications, wrote.
As part of broad-based cuts to the federal government implemented by the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, the Office of Personnel Management officials last week directed leaders of federal agencies to dismiss probationary employees, potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of people classified under that status. Since the directive was sent out, at least some probationary employees have been sent notices by the departments of Veterans Affairs and Transportation.
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