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WIRED
01-04-2025
- Health
- WIRED
The CDC Has Been Gutted
Leah Feiger Makena Kelly Kate Knibbs Apr 1, 2025 11:15 AM Thousands of CDC employees who worked on things like preventing HIV and lead poisoning have been told they were subject to a reduction in force. Experts say people will die. Thousands of federal employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were notified early Tuesday morning that they were subject to a reduction in force, or RIF, sources tell WIRED, shuttering programs that directly serve and inform the American public. The effect was felt across the CDC, as workers in the Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice (DEHSP), the Division of Population Health, the Division of HIV Prevention, the Division of Reproductive Health, National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, and National Center for Injury Prevention and Control all received RIF notices today. Dozens of other programs throughout the CDC's national centers for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion; HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention; Environmental Health; Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; and the Global Health center were also impacted. Multiple sources in the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency that houses the CDC, say that RIF notices began going out around 5:00 am ET on Tuesday. Employees across HHS offices arrived at buildings only to discover that their badges no longer worked, sources tell WIRED. 'I regret to inform you that you are being affected by a reduction in force (RIF) action,' reads the email to affected employees. 'This RIF does not reflect directly on your service, performance, or conduct. It is being taken solely for the reasons stated in the memorandum. After you receive this notice you will be placed on administrative leave and will no longer have building access beginning Tuesday, April 1, unless directed otherwise by your leadership.' The memorandum refers to the February 11 executive order from President Donald Trump titled 'Implementing the President's 'Department of Government Efficiency' Workforce Optimization Initiative.' 'The cuts today at CDC targeted programs that address all aspects of American lives,' a source at the CDC tells WIRED. 'This will lead to worse health outcomes, greater risks to the US public, and will contribute to the decline in US life expectancy … programs that were eliminated fund positions across the country, in red and blue districts.' 'There has been no effort in allowing staff to transfer projects, programs, or responsibilities,' says one CDC staffer. These cuts will have immediate impact, experts say. At the Division for HIV Prevention, where the stated mission is 'to promote health and quality of life by preventing HIV infection and reducing HIV-related illness and death in the United States,' at least half of the employees received RIF notices. 'We're going to have patients die,' says Jade Pagkas-Bather, an infectious disease doctor at the University of Chicago who also specializes in HIV prevention. 'Unnecessary, preventable death.' Joseph Cherabie, a physician and assistant professor in the division of infectious diseases at Washington University in St. Louis, says that these cuts will have devastating consequences for HIV patients around the country, especially in rural areas: 'It will be catastrophic.' Cherabie says that states relying heavily on federal funding for public health initiatives, like Missouri, where he works, will be hit especially hard. 'We're still seeing young people coming in with new HIV diagnoses, sometimes advanced HIV,' says Cherabie. Along with six other states, Missouri has been awarded CDC funding dedicated to lowering HIV infections, which helps pay for medicine like pre-exposure prophylactics (PrEP) for at-risk patients. Cherabie says patients outside of cities heavily rely on these kinds of CDC-funded HIV programs. 'Our efforts are largely dependent on these federal grants,' he says. 'We use them to make sure that we are able to distribute HIV testing equipment. We use them to make sure that we can get information and data on how much PrEP is being distributed, how many HIV diagnoses we have, how many HIV tests we're giving out. If we lose that, then we're moving around in the dark.' The CDC's DEHSP division includes the Asthma and Air Quality Branch, the Climate and Health Activity, the Emerging Environmental Hazards and Health Effects Branch, the Environmental Public Health Tracking Branch, the Lead Poisoning Prevention and Surveillance Branch, and the Water, Food, and Environmental Health Services Branch. All of these branches provide key services, and hundreds of employees received RIFs. Other divisions within DEHSP include, for example, the CDC's Vessel Sanitation Program, which helps the cruise industry prevent public health issues, inspects cruises, and provides information on outbreaks. It's unclear if the program's work involving cruise inspections, or the lists of outbreaks on cruises, will continue. Similarly, the Lead Poisoning branch that works to eliminate childhood lead poisoning has also been gutted by RIFs. It's unclear how much of its work will be able to continue. The CDC cuts are part of the Trump administration's plans to remove more than 10,000 Health and Human Services employees. Those sweeping reductions were 'orchestrated' by Brad Smith, a member of Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency, according to Politico. The agency-wide cuts were originally expected to fall on Friday. In a press release last Thursday, HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that this restructuring, paired with early retirements and deferred resignations, would reduce the agency workforce from 82,000 to 62,000 full-time employees. 'Over time, bureaucracies like HHS become wasteful and inefficient even when most of their staff are dedicated and competent civil servants,' Kennedy said in a statement announcing the restructuring last week. 'This overhaul will be a win-win for taxpayers and for those that HHS serves. That's the entire American public, because our goal is to Make America Healthy Again.' Anu Hazra, another infectious disease specialist at the University of Chicago who also works as a physician at the nonprofit medical clinic Howard Brown Health, says that cuts to CDC funding will severely curb the type of HIV prevention and testing he does, and potentially outright eliminate some of the services offered. 'It's the only way that the work gets done,' he says; he does not believe that other institutions will be able to compensate for the loss of federal funding. 'The idea that you can just privatize public health, I don't think it's a realistic solution.' Hazra says that funding cuts will disproportionately impact people like his patients on the South Side of Chicago, who come from socioeconomically disadvantaged Black communities that 'either don't have access or have really reduced access' to medical services including HIV prevention and treatment. Several doctors WIRED spoke to were unnerved because President Donald Trump's first administration had championed federal HIV prevention funding initiatives, which aimed to essentially end new HIV infections in the US by 2030, so they did not anticipate this radical change. 'This work that we're doing was thanks to him,' Hazra says. 'This is not just something that impacts people in the ivory tower. This is not just something that impacts people who are physicians, or scientists, or academics,' says Pagkas-Bather. 'This is coming for you.' Additional reporting by Emily Mullin.
WIRED
12-02-2025
- Business
- WIRED
Dozens of CFPB Workers Fired in After-Hours Blitz
Makena Kelly Dhruv Mehrotra Feb 11, 2025 10:41 PM Some affected employees of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were notified with an email that addressed them as [EmployeeFirstName][EmployeeLastName], [Job Title], [Division]. The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) headquarters in Washington, DC. Photograph: Getty Images Dozens of Consumer Finance Protection Bureau employees were terminated on Tuesday evening, sources tell WIRED. The cuts largely targeted contractors and so-called probationary employees, workers who have served less than two years at the agency. Sources tell WIRED that the CFPB's enforcement division was hit hard, but it's unclear how many employees were let go. Workers were informed that they had been fired with a frenetic email delivered around 9pm ET on Tuesday night. An evidently failed mail merge meant that some affected employees were addressed as [EmployeeFirstName][EmployeeLastName], [Job Title], [Division]. 'This is to provide notification that I am removing you from your position of [Job Title] and federal service consistent with the above references,' the email from acting chief human capital officer Adam Martinez says. 'Unfortunately, the Agency finds that that [sic] you are not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and skills do not fit the Agency's current needs.' The firings follow a tumultuous few days at CFPB. On Friday, staff for Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency shut down a portion of the agency's homepage after a day of struggling to obtain access to the CMS and other systems. WIRED reported last week that three DOGE staffers, including Gavin Kliger and Nikhil Rajpal were given access to CFPB's HR, procurement, and financial infrastructure. The DOGE workers were later granted access to all of the agency's systems on Friday, Bloomberg reported this week, including bank examination and enforcement records. Later on Friday evening, Russell Vought—Trump's newly confirmed director of the Office of Management and Budget—took over as the acting administrator for CFPB late Friday evening, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Soon after, DOGE staff began sending out email requests asking CFPB managers to give Kliger additional access to agency systems, including physical access control system, payroll processing systems, and the ability to edit the CFPB's website, sources tell WIRED. Just before 10:30pm ET on Friday, sources say someone who appeared to have administrative privileges, accessed the agency server using Secure Shell (SSH), a protocol that allows remote control of a computer over a network. Bypassing the content management system, they [unpublished] the homepage file, causing a portion of the CFPB homepage to display a '404: Page not found', notice typical of a website that has been deleted or is otherwise missing. The remainder of the site was functional, including submission forms for industry whistleblowers and consumer complaints. Around 11pm on Friday, the CFPB's X account disappeared and shortly after, according to a CFPB staffer, DOGE left the building. CFPB sources who spoke to WIRED described being blindsided by the DOGE staffers. "They said they would follow protocol but repeatedly did not," one says, noting that the level of access these staffers have could allow them to lock others out of the building, take down the website, and 'obstruct the bureau's ability to carry out its mandate.' One source at CFPB on Friday says they saw two young DOGE staffers wandering through the halls of the building trying to open doors. 'DOGE pulled a Darth Vader in cloud city where they came in promising to respect our rules and ask for read access and then tonight [Friday] at 6 they took a heel turn and demanded website access,' another CFPB source told WIRED at the time. In a pair of emails sent Saturday and Monday, Vought effectively ordered all work at the agency to stop, freezing various enforcement efforts and work on regulations that would affect payment programs run by Big Tech companies. The CFPB has long been a target of both Elon Musk and conservatives more broadly; the Project 2025 chapter on financial regulatory agencies describes it as 'a highly politicized, damaging, and utterly unaccountable federal agency' and calls to have it abolished. Musk wrote 'RIP CFPB' with a gravestone emoji in an X post Friday afternoon. Last November, he posted 'Delete CFPB.' There are around 1,700 employees in total at the agency. The CFPB was established by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, a sweeping piece of legislation that imposed significant regulatory reform in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Its remit is to protect consumers from unfair or deceptive financial practices, and the agency claims to be responsible for $19.7 billion in consumer relief since its inception, as well as $5 billion in civil penalties. Some of those wins have come against payment processors including Block, which was ordered to pay a total of $175 million in penalties last month for allegedly failing to sufficiently protect users of its Cash App from fraud. CFPB also has an active lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo for similar alleged failures on their shared payment app Zelle. Elon Musk will soon be in the peer-to-peer payments business as well, after X entered a partnership with Visa in late January.
