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 Senate Judiciary Committee postponed a vote on acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s nomination, a spokesperson said late Wednesday, as two retiring Republicans on the panel dug in over President Donald Trump’s personal “anti-weaponization” deal with the government he runs.
Sen. Chuck Grassley’s decision to delay the committee vote that had been set for Thursday marks a setback for one of Trump’s highest-profile Cabinet nominees, at the hands of Texas Sen. John Cornyn and Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a pair of Republicans set to leave the chamber next year.
“Chairman Grassley works to set President Trump’s nominees up for success in committee, not failure. Senators Cornyn and Tillis want written assurances from the Department of Justice regarding the Trump-IRS settlement,” the committee spokesperson said.
Blanche’s nomination to permanently head the Department of Justice needs the support of either Cornyn or Tillis to make it out of the committee to a vote by the full Senate, assuming all Democrats remain opposed.
“Why don’t you call over the Department of Justice and tell them they have one hour and 50 minutes to get me what I asked for,” Cornyn told reporters Wednesday afternoon amid the hardening standoff over his demand that Blanche and the DOJ put in writing a commitment never to pursue the president’s prized “anti-weaponization” fund, and to clarify the terms of Trump’s personal deal with the Internal Revenue Service.
Tillis told MS NOW that the conversations were complicated by the need for the Justice Department to get “several parties” to agree on the language of the statement Cornyn and Tillis are seeking.
“What I’ve advised the chair, and I would assume Senator Cornyn said something similar, is that we’re not prepared to vote yes yet,” he added.
“The Department has been in regular communication with Committee members for weeks, and we look forward to continuing to work productively with Senators to address any concerns,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in response to the decision to postpone the committee vote.
Cornyn was set to meet with Blanche on Wednesday morning, but the meeting was called off after Blanche failed to meet the senator’s demand for written proposals to modify the controversial settlement agreement he brokered between Trump and the IRS. The Republican senator is set to leave Congress when his term ends in January after a bruising May primary loss to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Trump’s chosen candidate.
“Maybe John Cornyn’s upset with me because I didn’t endorse him,” Trump told reporters Wednesday afternoon in the Oval Office. “I don’t know what it is, but I haven’t heard that there’s a problem. I heard (Blanche) is going through quite nicely.”
Cornyn made clear to Blanche during his confirmation hearing that he will not get his support until he agrees to reopen and modify the settlement. Due to the committee’s narrow Republican majority, one GOP “no” vote is enough to sink Blanche’s nomination.
The senator has asked Blanche to provide proof that the proposed nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund established as part of the deal between Trump and the IRS is formally dead, and he has also demanded Blanche narrow the tax audit immunity provisions the settlement afforded to Trump and his family.
Blanche has publicly stated that his department has dropped the fund, but he and the DOJ have dodged requests from Cornyn and a federal judge to put that in writing.
After announcing his meeting with Blanche would not take place Wednesday morning, Cornyn told reporters that changes from Blanche “in a modified release form” would be acceptable, but that “for some reason … they simply refuse to do it,” referring to the DOJ.
Shortly after the meeting was called off, a Justice Department official told MS NOW that the department “provided a written proposal to Senator Cornyn’s staff yesterday following ongoing discussion with both the Committee and the Senator’s office.”
Cornyn said that proposal was “not responsive” to his demands because it did not address the tax audit immunity provisions in the settlement, one of his key demands.
In May, Blanche signed an addendum as part of the deal that granted Trump, his family and his businesses immunity from pending IRS tax audits. That agreement, which has been decried by former IRS officials and legal experts as unlawful self-dealing, is being contested in federal court.
Cornyn noted that Blanche testified under oath that he could meet the request during his confirmation hearing.
“Maybe they think I’m just going to give up or you know, go along, but they’re mistaken,” Cornyn said when asked why he thinks the DOJ could be slow-walking his request.
Kevin Frey contributed to this report.
Sydney Carruth is a breaking news reporter covering national politics and policy for MS NOW. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at SydneyCarruth.46 or follow her work on X and Bluesky.
Mychael Schnell is a reporter for MS NOW.
Ebony Davis is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked at BLN as a campaign reporter covering elections and politics.
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived this week for his tour of Washington, he may have had a mission in mind.
Netanyahu needed to overcome his newly diminished stature and waning influence over his once close friend President Donald Trump as both leaders grapple with the unpopularity of a war they started together and is escaping their control.
His meeting at the White House with Trump on Tuesday, which was closed to the press, was the first face-to-face encounter between the two allies since the U.S. and Israel launched a joint attack against Iran on Feb. 28.
Trump gave him a muted welcome and afterwards simply described the meeting as “very good.” “Obviously, many important subjects were discussed,” the president wrote on Truth Social.
Rather than an intimate one-on-one setting, the Oval Office was full of top U.S. officials — Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, and special envoy Steve Witkoff.
But Netanyahu continued the full court press on the Trump administration.
Over the course of two days, in addition to seeing Trump and attending Sen. Lindsey Graham’s funeral at the Capitol, Netanyahu also met separately with Vance, Hegseth, and Rubio, White House and Israeli officials confirmed to MS NOW.
The Israeli prime minister’s slate of meetings with key U.S. national security officials comes at a pivotal moment in the Iran conflict as tensions escalate in the region and Americans increasingly sour on the war. A recent Quinnipiac poll shows 60% of American voters opposing U.S. military action against Iran and 74% against sending U.S. ground troops into Iran.
Not only does Trump face pressure as Republicans face an uphill battle to retain congressional control in this fall’s midterms, Netanyahu’s fate as prime minister is at stake in Israel’s upcoming September elections – and he can’t afford to lose Trump’s favor.
The talks largely focused on what to do next as Iran continues to menace shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and retaliate against American bases in the region and launch attacks on Gulf allies.
According to a senior Israeli official who was granted anonymity to describe the closed-door meeting, President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu did not come to a final decision after discussing three paths forward: get a “good deal” focused on Iran’s nuclear program and enriched material, have no deal and instead continue the blockade and economic pressure, or take escalated military action.
But Netanyahu did not tell Trump what he should do – nor did he express a preference.
The senior Israeli official noted Netanyahu has not ruled out diplomacy – as long as it is coupled with “very strong pressures,” calling the push to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program “a contest of will and a contest of force.”
“There are ways of squeezing them and squeezing them and squeezing them and negotiating at the same time,” the official said.
Netanyahu did not present President Trump with new intelligence regarding the underground Iranian nuclear facility Pickaxe Mountain, per the senior Israeli official, noting the U.S. and Israel already are constantly sharing intelligence – and know where Iran’s highly enriched material is. “We don’t think it’s moved, and I think we have a pretty good grasp on that,” the official said.
During their meeting on Tuesday, Trump and Netanyahu discussed ways Israel and the U.S. can work together to stop Iran’s nuclear program and get the Strait of Hormuz open to maritime trade, the senior Israeli official said.
The two leaders also discussed a third goal: to continue to undermine the Iranian regime and “possibly create future conditions for a change in that area.” U.S. officials have backed away from pursuing paths that would overthrow the current leadership, but Netanyahu still believes that could happen.
“The chasm that has been created between the people and the regime is not about to be closed,” the senior Israeli official said of Netanyahu’s thinking.
Netanyahu advised Trump in February that Israeli intelligence indicated launching strikes against Iran would lead to the toppling of the Islamic Republic’s regime – and five months later, the slain ayatollah’s son retains power with a close circle of hardliners, calling into question the accuracy of Israel’s intelligence apparatus.
But the senior Israeli official said at the time, Netanyahu did not promise the Iranian people would take fate into their own hands following a coordinated attack. Rather, he chose his words carefully and said that an attack could create conditions to “advance the probability or the possibility that that would happen.”
The conditions needed for the Iranian regime to fall, “did not materialize,” the official told MS NOW, adding, “not for lack of insight, but for either operational failure or decisions that were made.”
Despite Netanyahu insisting Israel and the U.S. are on the same page, differences still remain: the sale of F-35 fighter jets to Turkey and the Saudi nuclear arrangement did not come up during Wednesday’s White House meeting, according to a second Israeli official granted anonymity to describe sensitive discussions.
Meanwhile, the conflict continues to spread, with an Iranian drone attacking a U.S. gas storage tanker off the coast of Egypt on Wednesday.
Trump indicated he would not let Iran’s latest action slide, telling reporters on Wednesday that the U.S. would retaliate against Iran even as he leaves room for diplomatic talks to resume.
“It’s our turn, and we’ll see if we get there with an agreement at some point,” Trump said. “But we’re going to hit them very hard.”
As for what it would take for Israel to join the U.S. strikes, the senior Israeli official said that if Israel is attacked by Iran, “We will respond very, very forcefully and very quickly. And I think Iran would make a great mistake.”
Julia Jester covers politics for MS NOW and is based in Washington, D.C.
International rage over FIFA’s close ties to President Donald Trump has reached a fever pitch after soccer’s governing body announced a plan to sell a significant stake to an investor group led by Joshua Kushner, the brother of Trump’s son-in-law.
The president and his family have all but turned the White House into their personal piggy bank. And FIFA — which has its own sordid history of corruption — seems to have made itself a party to Trump’s self-enrichment under Gianni Infantino’s leadership, such as by paying for space inside Trump Tower in New York. (The organization has defended the office rental as a World Cup outpost.)
Soccer is seen by many as a unifying game. But Trump’s incorporation of FIFA into his political dynasty is threatening that idea.
FIFA has announced plans to sell a large minority stake in a new company that will run its main events, including the World Cup and Club World Cup, as part of a plan to triple the amount of development money it dishes out to its 211 member associations.
Under the proposals — which are subject to approval by a majority of those national associations and FIFA’s 37-member council — a new entity called FIFA Forward Enterprises (FFE) will take over all commercial operations, while FIFA remains the game’s global governing body and retains a majority stake in FFE.
A press release from FIFA confirmed the plans and said Thrive Eternal, which was launched by Joshua Kushner, is expected to lead the investment group that would control FIFA Forward Enterprise. FIFA did not clarify why Thrive Eternal was selected, and Kushner was already dabbling in sports.
But Trump basically has already given son-in-law Jared Kushner carte blanche to dictate U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East while simultaneously hatching business plans in the region. (Jared Kushner has denied any conflicts of interest.)
Joshua Kushner reportedly has been a major donor to Democrats. But, predictably, the idea of another Kushner becoming financially entwined with the World Cup — the world’s most popular sporting event — and basically being dropped into a position of global significance isn’t going over well. Several other soccer governing bodies have expressed concerns, including Europe’s UEFA.
“This crosses a line that football’s governing institutions should never cross,” UEFA said in a statement about The Athletic’s report, adding: “The soul and governance of football are not assets to trade — especially with zero transparency as to who gains financially. None of us are the owners of football. It is not FIFA’s to sell.”
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee also rebuked the plan, writing on X: “Apparently the fake Peace Prize and giant lease with Trump Tower weren’t enough — now Infantino performs a kickback hat trick by pursuing a multibillion-dollar deal with Jared Kushner’s brother to sell ownership stakes in the World Cup to private investors.”
FIFA, Donald Trump’s favorite corrupt racketeering enterprise in world sports, is now going directly into business with the Trump family!
Apparently the fake Peace Prize and giant lease with Trump Tower weren’t enough—now Infantino performs a kickback hat trick by pursuing a… https://t.co/knSZibuMea
— House Judiciary Dems (@HouseJudiciary) July 28, 2026
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., has already launched an investigation into the FIFA leader’s relationship with the Trump administration, while dozens of European lawmakers — citing concerns about “potential breaches of political neutrality” — have called for the FIFA Ethics Committee to investigate Infantino. This new proposal seems unlikely to assuage those concerns.
But what it does seem likely to do is fuel global anger toward the U.S. — the kind that has been growing since Trump retook office.
And when you consider that, it’s truly remarkable how the same MAGA movement whose members whined for years about politics mixing with sports is now in lockstep with a president who seems dead-set on casting his shadow over every sports event he can.
This post on X basically sums up the foul stench around FIFA’s latest proposal.
Sepp Blatter was Infantino’s predecessor as FIFA president and oversaw the organization amid some of its many scandals. When heof all people, is warning about how Trump and Infantino’s relationship is “deeply damaging” soccer, it’s a sign of how far FIFA has descended into the gutter.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
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