“This is not normal”
Jake Johnson for Common Dreams
“The grim state of affairs at the Trump CDC should terrify
everyone,” Brad Woodhouse, president of the advocacy group Protect Our Care,
said in a statement on Monday in response to reporting by The New York Times, which shows how Health and
Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy
Jr. and other administration officials have made the CDC “a skeleton of the
powerhouse it was.”
The Times noted that, as of May 2026, the CDC had 30% fewer
employees than it did before the Trump
administration initiated mass layoffs at the agency and across the federal
government last year.
There is also a leadership vacuum at the agency, according
to the Times, which reported that “only one of the 11 center directors from March 2025 remains at the agency” and “most of the
other centers are being run by acting directors, some of whom were elevated
from jobs one or two levels below.” The current CDC director is Dr. Erica
Schwartz, who “has made no public statements about the importance of childhood vaccines or corrected
misinformation from her boss, Mr. Kennedy,” the Times observed, even as
recorded measles cases reach levels not seen in decades.
“Interviews with more than 30 current and former employees reveal the agency is now tightly controlled by Mr. Kennedy and his associates, and its scientists are finding it increasingly difficult to do their jobs effectively,” the newspaper reported.
Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who headed the CDC’s respiratory
disease center before resigning
in protest last year, told the Times that the Trump CDC “is not acting like
how an agency like that should act.” In his resignation letter, posted to social media in August
2025, Daskalakis warned that “the nation’s health security is at risk and is
in the hands of people focusing on ideological self-interest.”
According to the Times, the CDC’s center for emerging and
zoonotic diseases, which manages Ebola and hantavirus, “now
has nearly 300 fewer employees than in March 2025, and the respiratory disease
center has lost nearly 200—about 17% in each case.”
“RFK Jr. has gutted the office that works on dangerous,
killer emerging diseases,” US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.)
wrote
over the weekend. “Disaster in waiting.”
Woodhouse of Protect Our Care said Monday that “after a
catastrophic global pandemic
followed by a record-breaking measles crisis, the CDC should be better prepared
than ever.”
“Instead, the agency keeps getting caught with its pants
down thanks to Donald
Trump and RFK Jr.'s self-sabotage and war on science,”
said Woodhouse. “Investigations are coming, but resignations should come much
sooner.”
The Times reporting coincided with new data from American Federation of Government Employees
(AFGE) Local 2883, which represents CDC workers. The union said the
CDC has lost over 3,800 employees during Trump’s second term, nearly a third of
the agency’s total workforce.
“This is not normal,” said Yolanda Jacobs, president of AFGE Local 2883. “What we
are witnessing is the dismantling of public health infrastructure our
country relies on.”
“CDC workers have endured eighteen months of chaos and
confusion, from detrimental layoffs and RIFs, to being left in a constant state
of panic about job security. This turmoil cannot continue,” Jacobs added. “Our
workers, who have dedicated their lives to serving the American people, deserve
better. Our country deserves an agency that is fully prepared to protect the
public’s health within and outside its own doors. Protecting our nation’s
public health workers also protects our nation’s public health.”
