The Dictatorship
‘CDC is over’: RFK Jr. lays off over 1,000 employees in Friday night massacre
UPDATE (October 11, 2025, 8:46 p.m. ET): This piece has been updated because, following publication, many fired employees began receiving emails communicating that despite the earlier notice, they would no longer be terminated.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. moved one step closer to his goal of dismantling the nation’s premier public-health agency by dismissing more than 1,000 scientists, doctors and public health officials from the Department of Health and Human Services late Friday night.
The dramatic move came during the second week of a government shutdown and is part of the Trump administration’s aggressive push to even further slash the size of the federal workforce and punish Democrats. The culling reportedly started with at least 4,000 people across departments including Education, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development and Energy, among others.
But the bloodshed at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was especially acute, according to a list crowdsourced by CDC employees who received layoff notices that was viewed by BLN. The firings ran across more than a dozen CDC divisions and centers, wiping out entire offices and teams that investigate disease outbreaks, manage infectious disease responses, collect data, publish scientific reports and communicate with global partners and Congress.
This administration only knows how to break things. They have made America at risk for outbreaks and attacks by nefarious players. People should be scared.
Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, former director of the CDC’s National Center on Immunization and Respiratory Diseases
“CDC is over. It was killed,” said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, the former director of the CDC’s National Center on Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, who recently resigned to protest what he described as Kennedy’s unscientific takeover of the CDC. “This administration only knows how to break things. They have made America at risk for outbreaks and attacks by nefarious players. People should be scared.”
BLN spoke with eight current and former CDC officials, most of whom requested anonymity for fear of retaliation against themselves or their remaining colleagues.
The emails alerting staffers came late Friday night, but current and former employees said CDC staffers had been bracing for layoffs since President Donald Trump signaled that he would use mass reductions in force as a way to punish Democrats for the ongoing shutdown, caused by a budget standoff between Republicans and Democrats.
Notification that they’d lost their jobs came even as the human resources professional tasked with implementation had been furloughed as part of the shutdown.
Several current and former officials said they initially believed the cuts — like other chaotic firings that were later walked back — might not be permanent. And there is a question about the legality of all employee firings during the shutdown. And, indeed, following publication of this article, many fired employees began receiving emails with the subject line, “Recession of Previous Notice of Reduction in Force,” communicating that that despite the earlier notice, they would no longer be fired. An HHS official who declined to be named because he was not approved to speak on the issue, told BLN that around half of the firings had been done in error.
The official said leadership in the Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Center, the Global Health Center, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report team, the Epidemic Intelligence Service, and scientists working on responses to outbreaks of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo and measles in the U.S., had received or would soon receive notices that their lay-offs had been rescinded. The official said the accidental firings had been the result of a “miscoding error.”
Regardless, three senior officials said, the damage has already been done.
In a move that may alarm lawmakers, the CDC’s entire Washington office was also cut. That office served as the agency’s conduit to Congress and to the broader Washington, D.C., public health community.
HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon texted a statement that blamed Democrats for the sweeping cuts and called the public health agency “a bloated bureaucracy.”
The incident manager and the deputy incident manager tasked with measles response were also fired, according to three senior sources. Both are being reinstated, however, according to a senior official. The country is experiencing its largest measles outbreak in three decades. Three people have died of measles this year and hundreds of children are currently forced to quarantine because of outbreaks in South Carolina and Minnesota.
“All HHS employees receiving reduction-in-force notices were designated non-essential by their respective divisions. HHS continues to close wasteful and duplicative entities, including those that are at odds with the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda,” Nixon’s statement said.
The CDC has traditionally operated as a nonpartisan institution — its career officials have served under both Republican and Democratic administrations. But there has been a sharp departure from that norm under Kennedy’s tenure.
Trump warned he would seek to ensure the harshest effects of the shutdown would affect Democratic priorities.
“We’re only cutting Democrat programs,” Trump said Thursday during a Cabinet meeting.
The current sweep of the governmentwide cuts is still unknown, but seems to target leadership positions, according to two former senior officials. A former senior official said the CDC cuts amounted to more than 9% of the agency’s remaining workforce, which had already weathered mass layoffs early this year.
A former senior official said the CDC cuts amounted to more than 9% of its remaining workforce, which had already weathered mass layoffs early this year.
The entire director’s office at the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases — meaning all the center’s leaders — was wiped out, a deletion that would likely disrupt critical public health functions at home and abroad.
Similarly, the office of the director at the CDC’s Global Health Center was abolished. That center is tasked with tracking and responding to health threats globally. Its goal — in addition to saving lives in other countries — is to “stop health threats at their source before they spread to the United States.”
The cuts also included the team that publishes the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the agency’s flagship journal that had been publishing fewer articles since Kennedy took over. (As of Saturday night, all those offices were being reinstated, according to the HHS official.)
One current CDC official said it “means not only is he silencing CDC, he can prevent states and anyone else in the field from using the best tool they have for sharing their own science.”
The Epidemic Intelligence Service and the Laboratory Leadership Service were also gutted. Those programswhich track global outbreaks, are staffed by a group known to become the next generation of scientists and public health leaders. (That office, too, is being reinstated, according to the HHS official.)
“These cuts have consequences,” said Dr. Deb Houry, the former CDC deputy director and chief medical officer who resigned in protest in August. “I am concerned about the safety of the American public.”
The cuts ripped through the center that forecasts diseases and responds to public health emergencies and the center that tracks and implements prevention programs for injuries from suicide to overdoses.
“Capacity to respond to things like suicide clusters in communities has been decimated,” Houry said.
Kennedy’s tenure at HHS has been unprecedented and chaotic. In just eight months, the secretary has: pushed sweeping budget cuts and canceled billions in research and development; overseen mass layoffs and reorganizations that erased whole teams tackling clear health threats; without scientific backing, withdrawn Covid vaccine recommendations for healthy children and pregnant people; gutted the agency’s vaccine advisory panel, firing respected experts and replacing them with ideological loyalists; installed a vocal Covid vaccine critic to chair a safety subcommittee; reopened the long-debunked vaccines-and-autism debate; hired a discredited anti-vaccine researcher who experimented on autistic children to trawl government data and relitigate settled science; pressed for access to private data to fuel the research; undermined his own epidemiologists during the Texas measles response; downplayed a shooting that left CDC staff shaken; announced sweeping policy changes on social media with no data to back them and accused the American Academy of Pediatrics of a “pay-to-play scheme” for daring to dissent. Most recently, he blew his self-imposed September deadline to figure out the cause of autism and, without compelling scientific evidence, blamed pregnant mothers’ use of Tylenol for the condition.
At the same time, a horde of experienced officials have quit or been pushed out and replaced with anti-vaccine allies and loyalists lacking public health experience or scientific credentials.
Firing so m any CDC leaders is in line with Kennedy’s pattern of forcing out career scientists and experts in key positions. That has left offices unfilled and resulted in him being surrounded by staffers willing to rubber-stamp his unscientific directives.
In Septemberrecently ousted CDC Director Susan Monarez, testified to senators on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that Kennedy had personally ordered her to fire center directors and “promote the next group, and continue to do so until I got to an organization that was compliant” with his demands. Kennedy has said he fired Monarez because she was “not a trustworthy person.”
Kennedy has vilified the CDC for two decades. In videos from anti-vaccine conferences, he likened the agency’s vaccine work to “fascism” and “child abuse,” calling it a “cesspool of corruption” full of scientists who were hiding the alleged link between autism and vaccines.
In a 2023 interview during his failed presidential run, Kennedy said of the CDC and other public health agencies that he wanted to “unravel the corrupt corporate capture of these agencies that turned them predatory, against the American public.” He said he planned to fire officials in charge and appoint people who would “turn them back into healing and public health agencies.”
Neither Kennedy nor the CDC’s acting director, Jim O’Neill — a recent political appointee with little experience — had commented publicly on the firings by Saturday afternoon. O’Neill’s most recent post to X was a photo of what he said was a bald eagle flying over the Capitol, taken from his Washington, D.C., office. He captioned it, “Good morning we are going to win.”
Brandy Zadrozny is a senior enterprise reporter for BLN. She was a previously a senior enterprise reporter for NBC News, based in New York.
The Dictatorship
Lawsuit seeks to stop the UFC fight on the White House South Lawn for Trump’s birthday
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal lawsuit seeks to halt the upcoming UFC fight card on the White House South Lawn in a mixed martial arts show timed for President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday and part of the celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary.
The filing Saturday by the Public Integrity Project on behalf of two Virginia residents contends the Trump administration’s authorization of the June 14 event was unlawful. The lawsuit says such approval violated National Park Service regulations prohibiting sporting events on federal parklands, Congress did not consent to the towering arch overlooking the event space and no environmental review was conducted before the construction.
“This is fundamentally a private, commercial, corrupt use of our most sacred national monuments for private gain,” said Brendan Ballou, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. “And that is what is motivating this lawsuit.”
The White House said in a statement that the legal challenge was “an obstructionist, baseless, and dilatory” attempt to prevent Trump from hosting the fight and that the event was “no different than the various other White House-hosted events on the South Lawn and properly permitted events on the Ellipse and National Mall throughout the year.”
UFC did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday.
Crews are erecting an octagon-shaped cage on the South Lawn. Trump has said the finished UFC project will feature “a 5,000-seat arena right outside the front door of the White House.” Additional large screens broadcasting the fights will be set up in a park at the nearby Ellipse, and the UFC has said it plans to issue as many as 85,000 free tickets to accommodate spectators at both locations.
The octagon and surrounding structures are the latest project in the White House building boom Trump is leading.
In an explosive interview with NBC aired Sunday, President Donald Trump cut the grilling short and left the set after peppering “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker with insults.
“You’re either crooked or you’re stupid,” Trump told Welker, who kept a cool demeanor despite the president’s barrage of disparaging slurs.
Moments before he attacked her, Trump — without providing any evidence — said he believes elections in the U.S. are rigged. Then he lambasted television news networks, singling out NBC, CBS and ABC.
“They’re crooked just like you’re crooked, your press is crooked. And ‘Meet the Press’ is crooked,” Trump said.
“To be fair, I’m not crooked,” Welker shot back. “But let’s continue.”
“Let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough,” the president told Welker, who is the second woman and first Black journalist to helm the network’s flagship program.
Trump added, “Thank you, darling. Have a good time.”
It was not the first time Trump has berated a female journalist on the job covering his presidency.
In November 2025, he told Bloomberg’s Catherine Lucey to stop talking, saying, “Quiet. Quiet, piggy.” One month later, he told ABC’s Rachel Scott she was “the most obnoxious reporter in the whole place.” Last month, he called MS NOW White House reporter Akayla Gardner “a dumb person” for pointing out that the cost of his White House ballroom project had doubled since it was first announced.
He has also repeatedly lashed out at CNN’s Kaitlan Collinscriticizing her for not smiling enough.
The wide-ranging interview, which was taped last week on a farm in Wisconsin, was interrupted by the loud sound of heavy rain on the metal roof of the barn where they met. Welker questioned Trump on his war with Iran, his “anti-weaponization” fund and the upcoming midterm elections.
On his nearly $1.8 billion fund aimed at compensating people who say they were wrongly prosecuted, including Jan. 6 Capitol rioters, Trump said “people were destroyed by dirty cops and by weaponization. Many of those people should be compensated.”
He described the people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as people who were “being ushered into the building” by law enforcement.
A federal judge temporarily blocked the fund last month and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said last week the administration would not be moving forward with the fundwhich faced bipartisan backlash.
When asked if the administration would pursue other avenues to revive it, Trump said he does not know what will ultimately happen and called Welker and her network “the fake dirty press.”
Despite campaigning on a promise to end foreign wars, Trump denied that he made such statements. He characterized the Iran war, launched by the U.S. and Israel on Feb. 28, as necessary to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
When asked about the rising cost of living as a result of the war, specifically gas and fertilizer, Trump chastised Welker.
“Are you ready? Am I allowed to talk? You keep asking questions and you don’t listen to the answers,” he said.
“I love the farmers and the farmers love me,” Trump said, adding that prices will come down after the war.
Welker suggested to her viewers Sunday that she and the president had a cordial conversation Saturday, saying they both “acknowledged the complications” posed by the rain. “He agreed to sit down with me for another ‘Meet the Press’ interview,” she said.
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.
Iran said visas were denied to key members of its national soccer team ahead of the World Cupwhich a U.S. official insisted was necessary so that Iran does not try to “sneak terrorists into the United States.”
In a post on Xthe Iranian embassy in Turkey said “visas were denied to a large portion of the managerial and executive staff, technical advisers, and others” on its team.
“You have now escalated the deliberate and discriminatory treatment against Iran’s national football team to its highest level,” the embassy said, accusing the U.S. of the “worst possible form of politically biased interference in sport” and “depriving Iran’s national team of its right to play in the World Cup under normal conditions.”
Iranian officials are accusing the U.S. government of violating FIFA regulations and breaching its obligations as one of the host countries of what is widely regarded to be the biggest sporting event in the world. The diplomatic standoff between the two countries comes just days before the World Cup is set to kick off and more than three months after the U.S. and Israel waged war against Iran.
A Trump administration official who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the subject told MS NOW in a statement that the visas “necessary for Iran to compete in the World Cup, including for athletes and necessary support staff, have been issued.”
The official added, however, “We will not allow the Iranian team to abuse this system to sneak terrorists into the United States under false pretenses.”
The statement from the Iranian Embassy in Turkey came in response to a post on X by U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack praising embassy staff for processing visas for the Iranian national team.
According to The Associated Presssome of the team’s officials have not received visas to enter the U.S., which is co-hosting the World Cup with Mexico and Canada. Games are set to begin Thursday.
Problems with getting U.S. visas had already led Iran to move its World Cup training base from the U.S. to Mexico. But Iran is still listed on the official World Cup schedule to play its first two games in Los Angeles on June 15 against New Zealand, and against Belgium six days later before heading to Seattle to face Egypt.
The Iran Football Federation’s secretary-general and its vice president were among 14 staff and officials without U.S. visas, AP said, citing Iranian state television. The federation reportedly accused the U.S. of “vindictive behavior.”
Emily Hung contributed to this report.
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
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