Updated February 14, 2025 at 18:15 PM ET
The Trump administration is slashing about 1,300 employees, or 10% of the workforce, at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to two agency employees who requested anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak for the agency. Staff were notified Friday of the cuts.
And as many as 1,500 employees at the National Institutes of Health were also laid off Friday, according to an employee at the agency, who asked not to be named out of fears of losing their job.
"Lots of tears here," another person at NIH told NPR, who was not authorized to speak publicly.
The layoffs at both agencies targeted probationary employees — a broad category that includes recent hires and long-time staffers who were recently moved to a new position. At the NIH, there may be some exceptions for certain personnel, such as those involved in clinical care, the employee said.
"This is absolutely tragic," said one current CDC employee. "If we lose these people we lose important capacity and in a very real sense we lose our CDC future."
The news filtered down through the agency on Friday in various meetings and phone calls, creating a sense of "confusion and uncertainty" among staff about exactly who would be losing their jobs, according to another CDC staffer.
They told NPR the cuts were coming at the direction of the Department of Health and Human Services — now under the leadership of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was confirmed as secretary on Thursday.
In response to a request for comment on the cuts, Andrew Nixon, director of communications at HHS, wrote in an email to NPR: "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."
The CDC's budget was $9.7 billion in fiscal year 2025. It's tasked with responding to infectious diseases, and public health emergencies such as the COVID pandemic, and safeguarding against other leading causes of death and illness. NIH, the world's large public funder of biomedical research, employs more than 18,000 workers and funds nearly $48 billion in scientific research outside the agency.
Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, called the cuts at the CDC "indiscriminate, poorly-thought out layoffs" that would be "very destructive to the core infrastructure of public health."
At the CDC, the cuts also hit the Epidemic Intelligence Service officer corps, where all those in the first year of their service were laid off, one of the CDC employees said. Members of the services, whom the CDC calls "disease detectives," are often dispatched to investigate disease outbreaks and public health threats in the U.S. and overseas.
"CDC is the health warning system for the United States," says Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist and author of Your Local Epidemiologist. "CDC needs change, but doing it so drastically and so aggressively with an axe instead of a scalpel is incredibly dangerous to the biosecurity in the United States."
Employees at both agencies told NPR they are gutted by the news.
"I am heartbroken, more than anything, for the future of science in this country as we gut this institution that has for so long been intentionally shielded as much as possible from politics," said a third NIH employee, who asked not to be named because of concerns about possible repercussions of being identified.
The person said their institute leaders didn't know earlier Friday if there would be any exceptions for any probationary employees.
"In the meeting they told us they don't know who of us will be laid off. They called the meeting to tell us we likely all will be, but no one will know 'til they get the email," they said.
That person works in a department that handles NIH grants to scientists outside the agency, such as universities and medical schools, "making sure grants get out the door, that the science they fund is rigorous, and the money is spent appropriately."
Those affected at NIH will be put on a 30-day administrative leave, but their access to the agency would be removed shortly after receiving their termination notice, the person said.
The layoffs come as the Trump administration is trying to cut billions of dollars the agency spends on "indirect" costs of research at schools, hospitals and other places, heightening what was already a sense of foreboding at the agency.
"They (whoever they are) continue to follow the recent script of blunt actions without explanation, justification, or vision for the future of NIH and its mission," Dr. Jeffrey Flier, an endocrinologist and former dean of the Harvard Medical School, wrote in an email to NPR.
Two top NIH administrators, Dr. Lawrence Tabak, the NIH's second in command, and Dr. Michael Lauer, deputy director of the NIH's extramural research, recently announced they are leaving the agency.
Separately, the head of ARPA-H, an initiative started in 2022 within HHS that supports innovation in health, was laid off today. Renee Wegrzyn served as the inaugural director for the organization.
Friday's layoffs are the latest in a series that started this week at CDC. Earlier this week, contractors in various divisions of the agency were let go, in addition to around 400 employees who accepted the "Fork in the Road" offer, according to a former CDC staffer with knowledge of the situation.
Other federal agencies have also started layoffs this week, including the Department of Energy and the Department of Veterans Affairs, as the Trump administration moves to drastically downsize the government.
Have information you want to share about the ongoing changes across the federal government? Reach out to these authors via encrypted communications: Will Stone @wstonereports.95, Pien Huang @pienhuang.88 and Rob Stein @robstein.22.
Edited by Carmel Wroth and Scott Hensley.
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