Reducing the price of groceries—a key campaign promise made by U.S. President Donald Trump—has thus far ranked low on his administration's list of priorities, but mass firings at numerous federal health agencies over the weekend suggested that scaling back efforts to ensure proper nutrition for infants, the safety of medical devices, and better maternal health outcomes are all part of Trump's upside-down vision for improving Americans' lives.
Roughly 3,600 federal employees across the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and other agencies were out of a job Monday after receiving emails over the weekend claiming that their "performance has not been adequate to justify further employment" in the federal government.
The terminations targeted probationary employees—those who have been working in their positions for less than a year—and came amid the spread of bird flu, or H5N1, among wild bird flocks and commercial poultry across the country.
The Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which works to prevent and prepare for public health emergencies and oversees pandemic stockpiles, was among the offices hit.
In a separate action, 25% of staffers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's program office for its network of animal research laboratories were fired. The National Animal Health Laboratory Network program office manages data related to the protocols followed by federal labs across the country, ensuring that scientists can accurately track animal diseases like bird flu.
"On top of firings at the USDA national testing lab this weekend too... this is VERY BAD," said Michigan state Rep. Carrie Rheingans (D-47) of the ASPR firings.
The spread of H5N1 among millions of birds, alongside price-gouging by corporate giants, has been linked to the skyrocketing price of eggs—a topic Trump raised frequently on the campaign trail and said he would address promptly when he took office.
About two dozen workers at the CDC's Laboratory Leadership Service (LLS), a fellowship program that trains scientist to detect and address public health threats, were also among those who were swept up in the HHS purge led by the Department of Government Efficiency, the advisory body run by billionaire Trump donor Elon Musk.
"We have come up with a new slogan for LLS: 'the disease detectors,'" one fellow told NBC News. "If you're not testing, you don't know what disease is there."
The series of health agency firings came as a tuberculosis outbreak has caused recent alarm in Kansas and an ongoing measles outbreak in Texas spread to at least 49 people, with more than a dozen school-age children hospitalized and officials warning 200-300 people could currently be infected.
At Food Safety News, Dr. Peter G. Lurie, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, wrote that the widespread purge of federal employees will likely "make it harder to recruit qualified staff to fill the roles moving forward"—with consequences for people across the country who rely on the work of experts in public health and nutrition.
"Many candidates with high qualifications will likely opt not to work for a new boss whose vision for progress includes the arbitrary mass elimination of new employees," wrote Lurie. "The FDA has struggled in recent years to recruit and retain qualified staff with expertise in topics like infant nutrition, where specialized training may be critical to make policy decisions affecting millions of Americans."
While Congress recently tried to address staffing difficulties by granting new hiring authorities to the FDA, "new employees brought in recently could be subject to cuts, impacting current teams and making it harder to recruit moving forward," wrote Lurie.
One policy analyst at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, Arielle Kane, toldPolitico that before she received a termination email on Saturday she was working on a pilot program for Medicaid in 15 states aimed at improving maternal health outcomes. Other fired employees had been working to implement a ban on surprise medical bills which was passed during Trump's first term.
" Donald Trump fired the people who make sure you and your parents get the healthcare you need," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). "The people who make sure medical devices are safe for you to use. The people who approve the lifesaving drugs you rely on. How does this help working people?"
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said the mass firings underscored the "multiple ways" in which the Trump administration's "incompetence and arson is about to hit Americans."
The mass firings came days after anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed as Trump's secretary of health and human services after confirmation hearings in which he appeared to confuse Medicaid and Medicare and refused to affirm that vaccines do not cause autism—a debunked claim he has amplified in the past.
"On day one, the new HHS secretary is gutting the agencies that would be necessary to 'make America healthy again,'" Reshma Ramachandran, a Yale health professor who chairs an FDA task force, toldPolitico, referring to a slogan embraced by Kennedy.
