RFK Jr. Got to Work Gutting CDC Staff on Day 1

The Trump administration fired nearly half the members of a vaunted public health program that works on the front lines of disease outbreaks, only a day after anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in as the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Members of the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) were told on Friday that they were among nearly 1,300 layoffs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), according to reports in Stat News and CBS News.

Experts from EIS have been dispatched for decades to investigate disease outbreaks in the United States and abroad, including when state health departments have needed help determining the origin of foodborne illnesses.

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The program’s emphasis on field work has earned members the nickname “disease detectives.” EIS members were among the first responders dispatched to investigate the post 9/11 anthrax attacks that targeted U.S. politicians and media, for example.

The EIS program was set up in 1951 to address concerns about biological warfare during the Korean War, and today operates as a two-year post-doctoral training program for epidemiologists who want hands-on experience.

Stat News reported that the entire incoming class of EIS members, which typically numbers 60 to 80 people, were told their positions had been canceled.

“This will destroy the EIS, which is one of the absolute crown jewels of global public health,” Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, told the outlet.

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The wider CDC layoffs—which impacted roughly 1 in 10 employees—were part of the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the federal workforce overseen by billionaire Elon Musk’s DOGE task force.

Musk and his team last week prioritized the termination of thousands of probationary workers.

At the country’s public health agencies, including the CDC and the National Institutes of Health, that means more than 5,000 employees who were hired in the last two years are slated for termination.

Hours after he was sworn in on Thursday, the day before the purging of CDC workers, Kennedy said he had “a generic list” of people in mind that he wanted gone from his department, in an interview with Fox News.

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But he pledged not to target segments of the HHS or its agencies that work on “good science” and offered praise for “lower level employees.”

“If you’ve been involved in good science, you have got nothing to worry about,” he told the network’s The Ingraham Angle. “If you care about public health, you’ve got nothing to worry about. If you’re in there working for the pharmaceutical industry, then I’d say you should move out and work for the pharmaceutical industry.”

The cuts to EIS, whose members serve on the front lines of public health emergencies, do not appear to align with that pledge.

“The country is less safe,” Dr. Anne Schuchat, a former senior CDC official, told CBS News. “These are the deployable assets critical for investigating new threats, from anthrax to Zika.”