President Donald Trump’s administration today moved to fire 5200 workers at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), using supervisors across the vast agency to warn probationary employees that they would soon receive termination notices. It also fired the director and much of the staff of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), a $1.5 billion agency created 3 years ago to fund high-risk, high-payoff research.
The move came on the first full day in office of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who had promised to eliminate hundreds of jobs at federal health agencies “on Day 1.”
At the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), where institute directors were hastily summoned to a meeting this morning to alert them of the imminent firings, some 1500 employees were initially scheduled to be let go; at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) the number was 1269.
“HHS is following the Administration’s guidance and taking action to support the President’s broader efforts to restructure and streamline the federal government,” the department said in a statement. “This is to ensure that HHS better serves the American people at the highest and most efficient standard.”
At CDC, many of the 50 or so members of the first year class of the Epidemic Intelligence Service—the agency’s prestigious “disease detective” training program for young epidemiologists—were notified they would be terminated. Three division directors in the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, a key front in pandemic prevention, were also on a list of targeted employees.
“This is indiscriminate, cruel, and is taking a wrecking ball to both the deep institutional knowledge of the agency and its future,” says one senior CDC scientist.
At NIH, many of those fired were junior employees. But the vast cull also took out senior employees who had been recently converted to staff positions after years as contractors—as well as division directors at NIH who were new to their positions. In some cases, the directors had to call junior staff to inform them of their impending firings while knowing they, too, were about to be terminated.
“This will decimate our ability to function as an institution,” says one senior NIH scientist who had to notify staff that HHS was firing them. “Whatever the opposite of government efficiency is, this process will take us there.”
The imminent terminations included many of NIH’s 483 research fellows. Some of its roughly 260 clinical fellows were initially on lists of targeted employees Friday morning, although at least some were spared later in the day. (The Clinical Center, where hundreds of clinical trials are underway, would have to “shut down” if the clinical fellows and nurses with probationary status were let go, one source who asked not to be identified told Science.) But animal care staff were among those fired.
Also among those slated for termination at NIH were grants administration and program officers, who ensure the smooth disbursement and functioning of more than $30 billion in grants to university scientists. The NIH grants process has already ground to a halt because study sections and advisory councils are not meeting because of a Trump ban on posting required notices about upcoming meetings in the Federal Register.
“Over the past year, NIH has brought in some spectacular people who are critical for programs. It will be a great loss,” former NIH Director Monica Bertagnolli, who stepped down last month, told Science.
Renee Wegrzyn, inaugural director of ARPA-H, wrote on LinkedIn that from today, “I no longer have the opportunity to serve as the director of ARPA-H.”
