NBC NEWS – The Trump administration on Saturday terminated hundreds of employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including fellows responsible for key public health roles, according to two sources at the agency who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern over retaliation.
Among them were about two dozen workers who made up the Laboratory Leadership Service, or LLS, a group responsible for training public health laboratory staffers and supporting outbreak response efforts.
The two-year fellowship program launched in 2015, focusing on laboratory safety and regulatory compliance.
“We have come up with a new slogan for LLS: ‘the disease detectors.’ If you’re not testing, you don’t know what disease is there,” a current fellow, who was among those who received termination notices, told NBC News.
Termination emails, which were sent to LLS staff members Saturday evening, cited poor performance as the reason for the firings, even though most of the dismissed employees have “excellent” performance reviews, a midlevel CDC official said.
Multiple outlets reported that a larger sister program at CDC called the Epidemic Intelligence Service, or EIS, known as the agency’s “disease detectives,” was expected to be cut significantly, as well. As of Sunday, though, the two officials who spoke to NBC News had not heard of firings at EIS. One, a senior CDC official, said everyone who was going to be terminated had been notified by Sunday.
“Even if EIS was spared, there are multiple other fellowships that were not, and that’s a pipeline for the next generation of CDC leaders,” the senior official said. “We’re being cut off at the knees. It is going to cripple public health for decades.”
Other departments that had cuts included the Presidential Management Fellows, which aims to develop future public health leaders, and the Public Health Associate Program …
