BREAKING: CDC, Education, and Health Departments Hit by Mass Firings
01:00:
(Sam Stein)
Hey, everybody, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at The Bulwark.
01:04:
(Sam Stein)
I am doing an emergency Bulwark take here on Saturday.
01:08:
(Sam Stein)
It's about 3.45 p.m.
01:10:
(Sam Stein)
The reason we're doing this is that overnight there was some...
01:17:
(Sam Stein)
remarkable bad news involving the administration.
01:21:
(Sam Stein)
A slew of firings across the federal government from the administration owed to the government shutdown, or at least that's what they say.
01:32:
(Sam Stein)
A number of different agencies have been hit, and I'm going to get to a couple of those, but I really want to focus on one in particular, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which is the agency that is, frankly, in charge of making sure that we are on the lookout for diseases, that we have the proper research to deal with diseases when they come here, and that we are doing everything we can in terms of prevention.
02:01:
(Sam Stein)
And this administration has been taking an axe to the CDC since the get-go.
02:06:
(Sam Stein)
RFK Jr., the Health and Human Services Secretary, has had it in for the CDC, owing to long-standing gripes, anti-vaccine quackery, but also what happened during COVID.
02:18:
(Sam Stein)
He thinks the agency has lost its mind and lost its direction and lost its purpose.
02:22:
(Sam Stein)
He also doesn't believe necessarily in combating infectious diseases.
02:26:
(Sam Stein)
He believes in wellness and prevention and things like that.
02:29:
(Sam Stein)
And so if you remember, a couple months ago, there was a fairly dramatic firing of the CDC director by RFK Jr. because he wanted her to sign off on all of his vaccine recommendations without looking at the data.
02:41:
(Sam Stein)
She said no.
02:42:
(Sam Stein)
She resigned and then a number of other top CDC officials resigned.
02:46:
(Sam Stein)
So that's the backdrop already to this issue.
02:49:
(Sam Stein)
But last night, Friday night, the administration took a second swing of the axe at the CDC, and they went after some of the sub-agencies in ways that are kind of confounding to me.
03:03:
(Sam Stein)
The data is coming in a little bit sporadically because not everyone is sure what
03:08:
(Sam Stein)
who actually was fired.
03:10:
(Sam Stein)
They're technically known as RIF, reduction in forces.
03:15:
(Sam Stein)
But we've been able to cobble together some of this stuff, and it's pretty remarkable.
03:20:
(Sam Stein)
So I'm just going to read through some of the stuff I know through sources and then some of the stuff that's been reported elsewhere.
03:28:
(Sam Stein)
Among those who have been hit by the firings, which have been described as a bloodbath, basically, and a Friday night massacre by people who are both at the CDC and aware of it, the leadership at the Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases,
03:45:
(Sam Stein)
That would be the acting director and the chief medical officer of that center, among other top officials.
03:51:
(Sam Stein)
They're just not gone, fired.
03:54:
(Sam Stein)
In addition, the leadership at the Global Health Center, the people who are responsible for responding to the measles outbreak, you might be saying to yourself, wait a second, that can't be right.
04:05:
(Sam Stein)
We actually are having measles outbreaks in this country for the first time in a long time.
04:10:
(Sam Stein)
Why would we want to get rid of the person who is responsible for monitoring measles outbreaks?
04:16:
(Sam Stein)
I don't know.
04:17:
(Sam Stein)
It's crazy.
04:19:
(Sam Stein)
But we have just apparently pushed out leadership who's responsible for that.
04:24:
(Sam Stein)
We have people who have been leading our response to outbreaks of Ebola as well, who are part of the list of folks who got rift.
04:32:
(Sam Stein)
Now you might be saying, wait, hold on.
04:34:
(Sam Stein)
In 2014, there was a global Ebola epidemic.
04:37:
(Sam Stein)
It was incredibly scary.
04:40:
(Sam Stein)
It shocked our country.
04:41:
(Sam Stein)
We went into panic.
04:43:
(Sam Stein)
Why would we want to do that?
04:44:
(Sam Stein)
Well, like,
04:44:
(Sam Stein)
I guess apparently Ebola's not a thing anymore.
04:46:
(Sam Stein)
There's what's called a morbidity and mortality weekly report, which the CDC puts out.
04:52:
(Sam Stein)
And basically, they monitor what's going on around the country in terms of outbreaks and things like that and diseases.
04:59:
(Sam Stein)
I believe historically, correct me if wrong, it was probably the first publication that in the 80s noticed what looked to be a fairly...
05:08:
(Sam Stein)
shocking disease developing that later became known as AIDS, which was good.
05:13:
(Sam Stein)
It's important to take note of these things and try to get ahead of it.
05:16:
(Sam Stein)
I think workers for the MMWR are now riffed.
05:21:
(Sam Stein)
Like I said, a bunch of HR people.
05:23:
(Sam Stein)
In fact, this is a kind of crazy one.
05:26:
(Sam Stein)
I was told by a person that the CDC's HR department, which is
05:30:
(Sam Stein)
currently furloughed because of the government shutdown, which means they can't work, but they're still employed.
05:36:
(Sam Stein)
I was told that they had to be unfurloughed to go back to work so that they could process the firings of their colleagues.
05:45:
(Sam Stein)
Talk about messed up.
05:46:
(Sam Stein)
Jesus.
05:47:
(Sam Stein)
I was also told that it wasn't just, as noted, people who were furloughed who were riffed.
05:52:
(Sam Stein)
It was
05:52:
(Sam Stein)
people who were currently working which means there are by definition essential personnel who were rift uh which doesn't quite make sense um but that's the situation again people are still picking up the pieces here um a few other tidbits that i know uh people at the office of smoking and health at the national center for chronic disease and prevention and health gone
06:15:
(Sam Stein)
smoking kind of matters as a public health matter.
06:20:
(Sam Stein)
People at the Division of Violence Prevention at the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, gone.
06:25:
(Sam Stein)
You would think that that's an important office.
06:28:
(Sam Stein)
It's a shocking situation.
06:30:
(Sam Stein)
People are really amazed by what's happening.
06:34:
(Sam Stein)
They're already fairly despondent with the current situation in the administration.
06:38:
(Sam Stein)
Obviously, morale is just terrible there right now.
06:41:
(Sam Stein)
But this is bringing it to a different level.
06:45:
(Sam Stein)
I guess it's worth sort of backing up and being like, well, how did we get here?
06:48:
(Sam Stein)
Why are they doing this?
06:50:
(Sam Stein)
The basic situation is this.
06:53:
(Sam Stein)
Government shut down at the end of September.
06:56:
(Sam Stein)
The administration led by OMB Director Russ Vought was like, if you shut down, we're going to fire all these people.
07:02:
(Sam Stein)
And Democrats and some Republicans said, that's ridiculous.
07:06:
(Sam Stein)
Don't do it.
07:07:
(Sam Stein)
It doesn't make any sense.
07:08:
(Sam Stein)
We've never fired federal workers during a shutdown before.
07:11:
(Sam Stein)
You can and can furlough them, obviously.
07:14:
(Sam Stein)
And that's standard practice.
07:15:
(Sam Stein)
And then that means when the government reopens, they come back to work.
07:19:
(Sam Stein)
And
07:20:
(Sam Stein)
For a couple of weeks now, no, 11 days now, Roswell and the administration have not acted on this.
07:27:
(Sam Stein)
And then on Friday, they just decided to act on this.
07:31:
(Sam Stein)
And my assumption is that they're going to say, well, you know, this is the Democrats' fault.
07:36:
(Sam Stein)
If they just reopened the government, then none of this would happen and this is the consequence and so on and so forth.
07:41:
(Sam Stein)
But that's bullshit.
07:42:
(Sam Stein)
It's just bullshit.
07:43:
(Sam Stein)
I mean, again, every single time there's been a shutdown in the past,
07:48:
(Sam Stein)
They've not fired federal employees.
07:50:
(Sam Stein)
They just haven't.
07:52:
(Sam Stein)
They furloughed them.
07:53:
(Sam Stein)
And in this instance, they are firing federal employees because they have a larger project that they want to fulfill.
07:58:
(Sam Stein)
I think there's a reason that you see the CDC being targeted.
08:03:
(Sam Stein)
It's because people like RFK Jr.,
08:05:
(Sam Stein)
want to target it and they're using this as an opportunity to target it there's other places to me the department of education for instance apparently is taking it on the chin one report said that um i'm just quoting from the education part of the layoffs continued overnight with the main office in charge of special ed funding being quote decimated as one person described quote they cut just about everyone that works with idea funding
08:29:
(Sam Stein)
I'm not sure how these programs exist moving forward.
08:32:
(Sam Stein)
I mean, is that what we're doing here?
08:34:
(Sam Stein)
We're just going to shut down special ed funding as part of this shutdown?
08:39:
(Sam Stein)
It's shocking, honestly.
08:42:
(Sam Stein)
And they're just using this as a pretext to go after domestic programs that they've never wanted to fund in the first place.
08:47:
(Sam Stein)
For me, I should say the CDC stuff is really alarming.
08:50:
(Sam Stein)
And that is for obvious reasons.
08:52:
(Sam Stein)
It doesn't take a genius to recognize that at any moment in time, an outbreak can happen.
08:58:
(Sam Stein)
And we want to not just get our hands on it.
09:00:
(Sam Stein)
We want to get ahead of it.
09:02:
(Sam Stein)
We want to make sure that we're monitoring it so that we don't get stuck with the consequences.
09:08:
(Sam Stein)
outbreaks are happening we have a measles outbreak in this country um and global pandemics have a acute way of getting on shore and you know who knows this is donald trump because his presidency uh the first term ended with the coveted pandemic
09:23:
(Sam Stein)
So it looks like we're just going to go into this blind a little bit and with a decimated workforce and an agency with incredibly low morale and lacking the institutional expertise that had made it a leading agency for preventative health and infectious disease research in the world.
09:45:
(Sam Stein)
And that's just the way it is.
09:47:
(Sam Stein)
And you just got to hope for the pest.
09:50:
(Sam Stein)
But boy, this is ominous, to say the least.
09:54:
(Sam Stein)
We'll see what else happens with these rifts.
09:57:
(Sam Stein)
But if you are aware of what's going on, obviously, we want to hear from you.
10:03:
(Sam Stein)
Go to our tip line.
10:04:
(Sam Stein)
That's the bulwark.com slash tips.
10:07:
(Sam Stein)
It's secure.
10:08:
(Sam Stein)
Let us know what you're hearing, especially if you're inside the CDC or any other government agency.
10:13:
(Sam Stein)
Please, we want to hear from you.
10:15:
(Sam Stein)
I'm also going to do something a little bit different now.
10:18:
(Sam Stein)
I'm going to give you my signal handle in case you're a government official and want to use it and get in touch.
10:24:
(Sam Stein)
It's astineindc.09.
10:28:
(Sam Stein)
Astineindc.09.
10:31:
(Sam Stein)
Hit me up if you have any tips about what the hell is going on.
10:34:
(Sam Stein)
The best way to deal with this and push back on it is to put light on it.
10:39:
(Sam Stein)
So if you have good tips, if you have good guidelines,
10:41:
(Sam Stein)
documents from inside the government about what's going on send them our way thank you for watching subscribe to the feed and we'll be in touch bye