It's Kat

Trump Administration Is Bringing Back Scores of C.D.C. Experts Fired in Error

Welp now they’re reversing some of the layoffs. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/h...

An HHS source says admin also RIFed entire Office of Population Affairs last night.
“Not a single staff person to run our nation's family planning program or the evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention program. The Office of Adolescent Health which nested within OPA functionally ceases to exist”

Lots of Epidemic Intelligence Service officers ("disease detectives") gone.
In-country staff in Africa (including those helping to manage the current Ebola outbreak) are fired.

Policy, comms, ethics, and science management (the people who clear science docs — determine whether they meet scientific standards) heavily hit.
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report staff are gone.

Per CDC source: At internal leadership meeting this afternoon, it was shared that 1,257 people were RIF'd at CDC. Number may not be final. Apparently, chief of staff was unaware that RIFs were going to occur so not clear who is making decisions. (Short 🧵)

Special education isn't a "nice thing to have." It isn't "charity" or doing something to make us feel better. It is a right. The right to a Free Appropriate Public Education is codified in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, signed by a Republican president.

It's worth printing out these zines from the attached link to hand out at #NoKings Oct 18. @mass50501.bsky.social @maindivisible.bsky.social @indivisiblechicago.bsky.social @indivisible.org @altspaceforce.altgov.info @altdhs.altgov.info @altuscustoms.altgov.info @elgrace25.bsky.social

The largest demonstration during Trump’s first term was around 750 events.

“We’re now expecting about 2,500 events around the country on No Kings. So we’re talking about literally four times as many.” - @leahgreenberg.bsky.social

Please join us on Saturday: www.nokings.org?SQF_SOURCE=i... #NoKings

Axios headline: “Mike Johnson faces growing internal revolt over shutdown”

The difference between Democrats surrendering in March and fighting back now is us. We must encourage Democrats to keep holding the line to protect healthcare for millions of Americans and stop health insurance costs from doubling this winter: indivisible.org/campaign/sto...

@sanders.senate.gov: "No, Speaker Johnson, the #NoKings Rally on October 18th is not a 'hate America' rally. ... It’s a rally of millions of people who believe in American freedom and are not going to allow you and President Trump to turn us into an authoritarian country."

If you are a federal worker, there are several credit unions and other financial institutions that are offering zero interest loans during the government shutdown.

Please go to my website for more information: www.sanders.senate.gov/resources-fo...

Good piece: DOGE was the battering ram, but Russ Vought was the one enabling it, and then hiding it's impacts.

IRS Halts Layoff Plans, Begins Rehiring Amid Staffing Shortages The agency is attempting to rebuild its workforce and restore public confidence.

Treasury Department: Treasury cut 1,446 employees on Friday. Two Internal Revenue Service employees confirmed layoffs were taking place at the tax agency, which has already shed more than 25,000 employees. One employee who was laid off was working Friday and exempt from shutdown furloughs.

The IRS is laying off people during the shutdown, even though it was rehiring staff it previously fired because it was so shorthanded.
This one stands out because firing IRS employees costs the government money, since they bring in about $6-8 for every dollar spent on tax enforcement

RALLY: FIGHT FOR SCIENCE Stand Up for Science along with patients, advocates, scientists, members of Congress, and allies will gather to demand protection of the nation's health institutions call out Health and Human Services...

📲 Join us Virtually!: act.standupforscience.net/events/virtu...

Extremely bad news if true (and unlikely this reporter would run with it if not). The MMWR has been the earliest warning bell for outbreaks since it announced the first US cases, in 1981, of what was later identified as AIDS.

This will be a grievous shock to what remains of US public health.

Trump Administration Lays Off Dozens of C.D.C. Officials

FULL STORY HERE: Emails began flooding CDC inboxes late Friday night announcing dozens of layoffs. HR people brought back from furlough to oversee the RIFs. Disease detectives, entire Washington office, global health, injury prevention, MMWR staff among those hit.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/u...

BREAKING: Friday night massacre underway at CDC. Doznes of "disease detectives," high-level scientists, entire Washington staff and editors of the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) have all been RIFed and received the following notice:

If I were actively trying to destroy the United States from within, going after and dismantling its public health would be like the first thing I’d do.

Just pointing that out.

This is beyond dangerous. It’s leaving us vulnerable in a way we can’t really fathom until it’s too late.

BREAKING NEWS: CDC employees terminated in apparent Friday night massacre. The Trump administration is using the shutdown to further weaken the our national public health infrastructure.

"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."

by @jeremyfaust.bsky.social
insidemedicine.substack.com/p/breaking-n...

BREAKING NEWS: CDC employees terminated in apparent Friday night massacre. The Trump administration is using the shutdown to further weaken the our national public health infrastructure.

More on the CDC tonight: @jeremyfaust.bsky.social , who is impeccably sourced there (physician, Harvard faculty) has details on the divisions hit by the apparently illegal RIFS. insidemedicine.substack.com/p/breaking-n...

I don’t know who needs to hear this but the CDC is being eviscerated right now. America is not going to have any kind of outbreak response capacity after tonight. Americans’ health data is no longer secure. Say goodbye to federal public health in any capacity. It’s a disaster. We won’t recover.

Poster Image with a woman yelling into a megaphone.; Title reads: TAKE BACK SCIENCE. Bubbles read: 3:00pm, Rally, Oct 17th.; Subtitle reads: Health and Science for the People!; A pin emoji with text: 200 Independence Ave SW, Washington DC; a Virtual Call emoji with text: Join us virtually at: bit.ly/4mXwrfY ; bottom corner has QR code and a logo for Stand Up For Science

IT'S TIME TO TAKE BACK SCIENCE

FIGHT FOR SCIENCE RALLY ✊🌏
⏰ WHEN: October 17th, 2025
📍WHERE: 200 Independence Ave SW, Washington DC!
RSVP IRL: act.standupforscience.net/events/rally...

@standupforscience.bsky.social

#impeachTheQuack
#GetOutTheVought
#StandUpForScience

RFK Jr on Tylenol and autism: "It is not proof. We're doing the studies to make the proof."

The Trump admin is in the midst of laying off 1,100-1,200 HHS staff. The CDC's outbreak responders, gone. The office producing CDC's weekly journal MMWR is gone. CDC staff securing sensitive data, gone. Worker safety, gone. Immunization group, gone.

Instead, Congress watches RFK "make the proof"

Over the weekend ICE abducted an NIH contractor when he showed up to a courthouse for his green card hearing. He is documented. His wife is a citizen.

He is also member of the skeleton crew of animal care staff that works through a shutdown, to ensure the health and wellbeing of research animals.

Cannot be repeated enough: this was not a voluntary resignation program. Workers were told they were more valuable in the private sector, that they might be fired from their jobs, that they could expect no reasonable work accommodations, that they would work for leaders who were undermining services

Mark Blaxill helped build the anti-vaccine movement. RFK Jr. just hired him at CDC. Neither a physician nor a scientist, new CDC senior adviser Mark Blaxill claims without evidence that every child who takes vaccines is in some way injured.

He helped build the anti-vaccine movement. RFK Jr. just hired him: Among other things, Mark Blaxill tried to deter parents in Minnesota from getting MMR in the middle of a measles outbreak. www.msnbc.com/msnbc/news/r... via @msnbc.com @brandyzadrozny.bsky.social

So many people with specialized careers making the inner workings of the government function, or who specialized in some area of science or public service that's just not represented in the private sector. What are these people supposed to do? I'm sorry NIH lost you as a Program Officer.

I was one of those people and I’m still without work. ‘Career-ending’ is sadly not an overstatement. Standing with you and my colleagues who endured this senseless ordeal and with the country that suffers for it.