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BREAKING NEWS: CDC employees terminated in apparent Friday night massacre. [View all]
Swell.
— Khashoggi's Ghost (@urocklive1.bsky.social) 2025-10-11T04:14:58.774Z
The Trump administration is using the federal government shutdown as an excuse to terminate CDC employees. The above screenshot is an email obtained by Inside Medicine, received by a CDC official within the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases [NCIRD] Office of the Director.
This is, to my knowledge, the first visual confirmation of this fresh round of HHS terminations, promised earlier in the day by Russel Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget—who previously warned that a government shutdown would be leveraged as yet another pretense to dismantle large swaths of the CDC. Ironically, some CDC employees who have been furloughed due to the shutdown were apparently called back in to do this particular work. Of note, that alone may make these RIFs illegal, simply on procedural grounds, according to a legal expert I spoke to.
In addition to rank-and-file scientists and staffers, institutional leaders were affected this time around, leaving it unclear just how the agency’s major centers and divisions might continue to function.
“Whole NCIRD Office of the Director RIF’d,” one former CDC official familiar with the situation told me. “Acting Director and Deputy of NCIRD definitely RIFd.”
This is, to my knowledge, the first visual confirmation of this fresh round of HHS terminations, promised earlier in the day by Russel Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget—who previously warned that a government shutdown would be leveraged as yet another pretense to dismantle large swaths of the CDC. Ironically, some CDC employees who have been furloughed due to the shutdown were apparently called back in to do this particular work. Of note, that alone may make these RIFs illegal, simply on procedural grounds, according to a legal expert I spoke to.
In addition to rank-and-file scientists and staffers, institutional leaders were affected this time around, leaving it unclear just how the agency’s major centers and divisions might continue to function.
“Whole NCIRD Office of the Director RIF’d,” one former CDC official familiar with the situation told me. “Acting Director and Deputy of NCIRD definitely RIFd.”
https://insidemedicine.substack.com/p/breaking-news-cdc-employees-terminated
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