On February 14, 2025, the Trump administration fired thousands of Health and Human Services (HHS) employees. Those fired included 1,300 employees from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), equal to about 10% of the total workforce, and 1,500 employees from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The layoffs focused on probationary employees, including staff who had recently been hired, promoted, or moved to a new position. Some of those impacted had been with the agency for several years.
Andrew Nixon, HHS Director of Communications, stated that the firings were part of a government-wide effort to “ensure that HHS better serves the American people at the highest and most efficient standard." However, according to Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, the cuts would be "very destructive to the core infrastructure of public health."
Lawrence Tabak, NIH Principal Deputy Director and the agency’s deputy ethics counselor, and Dr. Michael Lauer, Deputy Director of the NIH's extramural research, announced earlier this month that they were leaving the agency.