Hundreds of employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) who were laid off on Friday amid the government shutdown were reinstated, according to media reports. The employees were sent “incorrect notifications,” a senior administration official told The New York Times.
The official went on to say that as of Saturday, “any correction has already been remedied.”
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Why were the employees laid off?
According to the Times, which was the first to report on this, those who were mistakenly fired include the two top leaders of the federal measles response team; people working on containing Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo; members of the Epidemic Intelligence Service; and the team behind the CDC’s scientific journal, “The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.”
Those in the measles response team were also employees at the Office of the Director for the Global Health Center, as well as the Office of the Director at the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Disease.
Straight Arrow News reached out to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for comment.
In an interview with CBS News‘ Margaret Brennan on Sunday, Vice President JD Vance blamed the confusion and “chaos” regarding the CDC layoffs on Senate Democrats, something President Donald Trump has done as well.
“We are figuring out how to take money from some areas and give it to other areas,” Vance said. “That chaos is because [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer and the far-left Democrats shut down the government.”
Sunday marks the 12th day of the government shutdown, which started after Congress could not agree on a spending plan. Republicans say they want a “clean” funding bill with no extra provisions, and that Democrats insist on unrelated additions. Meanwhile, Democrats say Republicans refuse to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies, which will make health premiums rise to unaffordable levels.
“I want to assure the American people that the frontline health care workers, the people who monitor measles, Ebola and other infectious diseases — those people are still on the job, and we’re trying very hard to figure out how to ensure those people get a paycheck, of course, because we want them to be happy and healthy,” Vance said. “We want them to be able to do their jobs well.”
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) said 1,300 CDC workers were initially given layoff notices on Friday, CNN wrote. Of these, 700 were brought back on Saturday, and 600 are still laid off, AFGE said.
Government shutdown and layoffs
Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, posted to his X account on Friday that “RIFs,” or reductions in force, “have begun.” In late September, he warned agencies in a memo that they should start preparing for mass layoffs pending the shutdown, especially for programs “not consistent with the President’s priorities.”
More than 4,100 federal workers were laid off, according to a court filing by the Department of Justice. Unions such as the American Federation of Government Employees sued the Trump administration over the layoffs.
Along with the CDC, employees at the Department of Education, Food and Drug Administration and National Institutes of Health lost their jobs. When asked about how many of these layoffs would be permanent in the Oval Office on Tuesday, President Donald Trump said, “If this keeps going on, it’ll be substantial, and a lot of those jobs will never come back.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement Friday that “Nobody’s forcing Trump and Vought to do this.”
“They don’t have to do it. They want to,” he said. “They’re callously choosing to hurt people — the workers who protect our country, inspect our food, respond when disasters strike. This is deliberate chaos.”
CDC upheaval
The CDC has seen its share of challenges this year: in August, a gunman shot at the agency’s Atlanta headquarters. DeKalb County police officer David Rose was killed in the shooting, and the gunman died by suicide at the scene.
CDC workers also faced job cuts earlier this year, with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. overseeing the dismissal of 2,400 employees, according to Reuters. About 942 of them were rehired months later.
The White House in August fired the former CDC director, Susan Monarez, something she said was done for political reasons and because she and Kennedy clashed over vaccine policy. Following Monarez’s ouster, other CDC officials, such as Dr. Debra Houry, resigned. Houry said in an interview with The Associated Press that without Monarez, “we don’t have scientific leadership anymore.”
Jim O’Neill, the deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, was picked by the White House to serve as acting head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
