Photograh by Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is ground zero in a battle over the size and scope of the federal government—and Atlanta is poised to feel the collateral damage.
First came the April Fool’s Massacre—the April 1 firing of about 2,400 employees (about 800 of the “reductions in force” were later rescinded). Then, on October 10, a little more than a week after the federal government shut down, some 1,300 CDC employees received layoff notices by email. About 700 were rescinded the next day, a jolting misstep blamed on “data discrepancies and processing errors.” And in between, on August 8, a shooter fired hundreds of shots into the CDC building, piercing the “bullet-resistant” windows, and killed a DeKalb County police officer. The man reportedly believed he had ill effects from the Covid-19 vaccine and that CDC was responsible.
In all, as much as one-third of CDC is gone, or 4,300 people. That estimate, from AFGE Local 2883, the federal workers’ union, includes probationary employees cut in February and people who took buyouts or left amid the chaos. Among others, RIFs hit the Global Health Center; the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology; the CDC library; the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion; the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control; and the Office of the Director. Even the Office of Human Resources, which typically helps employees determine their benefits as they depart, wasn’t spared.
“It’s like there’s not gonna be anything left at all. They’re really gutting everything this time,” one Reddit user posted on October 10, as CDC employees were trying to tally the offices hit by the RIF.
The shutdown RIFs are just another round in the starts, stops and restarts of firings that employees described as ongoing trauma. “We’ve taken blow after blow after blow. It’s psychological warfare,” one RIFed employee said at a press briefing arranged by the American Federation of Government Employees, which quickly sued to stop the firings. A federal judge in California temporarily blocked the October 10 action, though like most other federal workers, CDC employees are furloughed without pay due to the shutdown.
The cumulative hit to CDC is a loss for the City of Atlanta, too, though it is unfolding slowly. A lawsuit filed by the federal workers union paused the April layoffs, but some terminations were later allowed to move forward. Likewise, employees RIFed on October 10 are technically on administrative leave until their termination becomes effective on December 8. Offices are dark at CDC, but the economic impact hasn’t yet fully hit.
The shrinking of CDC strikes an iconic Atlanta institution that has had broad influence. The Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce promotes the city as “the Center for Global Health,” bragging rights stemming from an ecosystem around the world’s premier public health agency. Yet the Trump administration plans to eliminate CDC’s Global Health Center.
President Donald Trump’s budget proposal zeroes out the center’s funding; in fiscal year 2024, it had a budget of $682 million that would drop to $0 in fiscal year 2026, according to an analysis by health policy researchers at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Likewise, the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion would go from a budget of $1.4 billion to $0. Overall, CDC would lose $3.8 billion in funding, or 42 percent, compared to fiscal year 2024.
Andrew G. Nixon, director of communications of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, provided this explanation to Atlanta: “HHS under the Biden administration became a bloated bureaucracy, growing its budget by 38 percent and its workforce by 17 percent. All HHS employees receiving reduction-in-force notices were designated non-essential by their respective divisions. [emphasis his] HHS continues to close wasteful and duplicative entities, including those that are at odds with the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda.”
But even before the October 10 RIF, nine former CDC directors warned that CDC cuts would leave the U.S. “ill-prepared for future health emergencies,” and a Trump-appointed CDC director and three top CDC leaders have resigned in protest of changes they said elevate politics over science.
Leighton Ku, director of GWU’s Center for Health Policy Research and a lead author of the CDC economic impact report, calculated the economic fallout of the proposed CDC budget cuts, and it’s devastating for Georgia. The proposed cuts would erase about $1.9 billion of the state’s gross domestic product, a measure of its overall economy. The state would lose about 12,300 jobs, which includes the ripple effects on various businesses as thousands of CDC workers are laid off. Tax revenue would drop by almost $81 million, according to the analysis.
While it’s likely that the final budget won’t be quite that draconian, Ku notes that the U.S. Senate and House each drafted proposed budgets with significant cuts to CDC. “It is, in its own way, the equivalent of the administration going after Harvard,” he says. “This is the Harvard of the government in its public health efforts. For some reason or another, it’s being attacked particularly hard.”
A spokesperson for Governor Brian Kemp responded to questions about CDC losses with optimism—and without addressing the potential impact of the cuts: “Georgia’s economy has consistently broken records, including in industries such as life science and innovation. Thanks to our pro-business environment and commitment to fiscal responsibility, we are well-positioned to continue that trajectory in the future.”
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The economic impact of layoffs starts quietly, with people canceling their plans to buy a new car or cutting back on dining out. But the personal trauma spreads like its own disease—among those laid off, those still on payroll but furloughed, and those who see their friends and former colleagues at the center of a storm.
Olivia, who worked in human resources at the CDC, got her RIF notice when she awoke on April 1. (We’re using a pseudonym because former and current employees are fearful of being named publicly.) Ever since February, when the administration announced its reduction in force plans and began dismissing probationary employees, Olivia had been checking her morning email with trepidation. When it finally arrived, the impact was magnified by her HR work; she and her colleagues, despite being RIFed, still needed to help employees navigate their terminations. Each one had a story: single mothers living paycheck to paycheck, people getting treatment for cancer or midway in a pregnancy, veterans who created their new lives at CDC, spouses who both worked at CDC and both got RIFed, and people like her who had never worked for any other employer.
Delayed by a court case, her April RIF became final in August. “I still cry every day to know that a job I loved, that I’d been doing so long, is gone,” she says.
The April layoffs cut about half of the Office of Human Resources, Olivia says. The October RIF gutted the rest of HR, leaving only about 10 percent of the workforce, she estimates. She’s working as a volunteer to support people in the latest RIF; she hasn’t yet found a new job.
Olivia worries not just about her own future, but of the future of the agency. Perhaps one day it will be rebuilt, but the HR cuts seem designed to make that more difficult. How can that possibly happen, she wonders, without people who have the specialized knowledge to rebuild teams of public health experts?
For more stories of the CDC’s RIFed workers, read our previous article, “6 months later, Atlantans are still dealing with the fallout of April’s CDC cuts.”
