Trump administration's HHS layoffs target disease control, mental health services

Over the weekend, as a government shutdown stretched into its second week, the Trump administration carried out a sweeping reduction in force across federal health agencies. Hundreds of workers received termination notices Friday, targeting positions in disease surveillance, mental health services, and disaster preparedness—roles that sit at the center of how the country responds to public health crises. The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees nearly 80,000 employees and administers health insurance for roughly half the nation, bore the brunt of the cuts. An administration court filing estimated between 1,100 and 1,200 HHS workers were being dismissed, though the agency declined to specify which divisions were hit hardest or provide an exact count.

The chaos that followed revealed the scale and speed of the operation. At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 1,300 employees received layoff notices on Friday. By Monday, over 700 of those notices had been revoked—the result, according to a federal health official speaking anonymously, of a system glitch. But roughly 600 CDC workers remained fired. Among those initially targeted and then reinstated were members of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, the agency's outbreak response team sometimes called disease detectives. These officers deploy to investigate health threats that cross state lines and international borders. Dr. Anne Schuchat, the CDC's former principal deputy director, noted the bitter irony: "These are people who go into really scary places. Usually you think it's nature that's going to be giving you a hard time, the viruses, not the government."

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA, also saw significant staff reductions. Two agency employees with knowledge of the layoffs, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the cuts affected multiple departments, including the Office of Communications and the Center for Mental Health Services. Within the Center for Mental Health Services, one of two branches overseeing millions of dollars in grants to community health clinics was largely eliminated. Dakota Jablon, a public health analyst and former SAMHSA employee, warned that losing experienced staff at a grantmaking agency would create "devastating ripple effects across the behavioral health field." Even if grant money continued flowing, she said, the remaining staff would be stretched thin and often working outside their expertise. Dr. Eric Rafla-Yuan, a psychiatrist and chair of the Committee to Protect Public Mental Health, raised another concern: SAMHSA provides crucial funding and support to state mental health programs, and staff cuts could destabilize those safety nets.

The layoffs were not the first wave. Six months earlier, HHS had already shed thousands of researchers, scientists, doctors, and senior leaders through layoffs and voluntary separation offers. The department's workforce had dropped by more than 2,000 positions since the start of the year, falling to just under 80,000 employees. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been pursuing a broader restructuring, consolidating agencies that manage addiction services and community health centers into a new office called the Administration for a Healthy America. That effort has faced congressional resistance and legislative delays.

The administration framed the dismissals as necessary cost-cutting. HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said the terminated employees were deemed nonessential and that the agency was working to "close wasteful and duplicative entities, including those that are at odds with the Trump administration's Make America Healthy Again agenda." He did not elaborate on which entities or functions fell into that category. The American Federation of Government Employees Local 2883, which represents CDC workers in Atlanta, called the operation a "politically-motivated stunt" designed to pressure Democratic lawmakers into ending the shutdown. Union President Yolanda Jacobs said in a statement that the firings were "disrupting and destroying the lives of everyday working people, who are constantly being used as bargaining chips." Health professionals and former staffers expressed concern that the cuts could impair the government's ability to track disease trends, respond to outbreaks, fund medical research, and monitor food and drug safety—core functions HHS is required by Congress to perform.