What The Hell America!

Employees at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta are accusing the Trump administration and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) of laying off Black CDC workers at higher rates than other racial demographic groups. 

Three employees — two of whom received layoff notices on Tuesday — told Capital B Atlanta that the CDC’s labor force reductions in Atlanta were concentrated in areas of health study that have an outsized impact on Black people, including HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, gun violence, and youth violence.

An internal memo provided to Capital B Atlanta by a CDC employee appears to show a list of agency departments and divisions that were downsized on Tuesday. In addition to divisions related to areas of research in which Black people are overrepresented, the memo also lists research divisions primarily affecting women and other minority groups.

“They went in there and dismantled anything that would help any marginalized community,” CDC information technology specialist Irismar “Reese” Williams said on Tuesday, after receiving a layoff notice. “Make no mistake: This is a direct attack.”

In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services denied to Capital B that the CDC’s restructuring is racially motivated, calling the allegations “not only absurd but entirely inaccurate.”

“This reorganization will enhance the American experience with HHS by making the agency more responsive and efficient, while also positioning the Department to improve health outcomes for a nation grappling with chronic disease and illness, which affects all Americans,” said Emily G. Hilliard, Health and Human Services deputy press secretary.

The White House didn’t immediately respond on Wednesday to an emailed request for comment. A CDC spokesperson declined to comment on the employees’ claims, deferring to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which also hasn’t responded to a request for comment.

Civil rights leaders have been sounding the alarm about potential bias in DOGE downsizing since the agency that President Donald Trump tasked with reducing federal government waste began laying off workers  last month.

The federal government is one of the largest employers of Black Americans in the nation, serving as a gateway to middle-class employment for many. Prior to Tuesday, an estimated 12,000 people worked at the CDC, according to Reuters and the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Black staffers made up more than 27% of the CDC’s workforce in 2018, according to a National Institutes of Health analysis.

Williams was one of an estimated 10,000 federal government workers who received layoff notices early Tuesday morning. She’s been placed on administrative leave until June 2, her last day of employment at the CDC. The 46-year-old Snellville resident, a single mother of two adult children, said she has worked at the CDC for 23 years.

She said DOGE workers have patrolled the halls of the CDC’s offices in Atlanta in recent weeks, combing through records and interviewing agency leaders to find ways to reduce staff, departments, and overall expenditures.

“Every day has been fresh hell,” Williams said, insisting that DOGE cuts are motivated by conservative political agendas rather than conserving governmental funds.

Hilliard said the CDC layoffs were part of the Trump administration’s overhaul of HHS, which is designed to address the agency’s core mission: stopping the “chronic disease epidemic,” and making America “healthy again.”

Part of that mission involves eliminating redundant administrative positions. Hilliard said HHS had 41 chief information officers covering just 28 divisions, for example, in addition to “dozens” of IT and HR departments.

Williams said due to her role as treasurer in the local American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) union chapter, she wasn’t surprised by the layoff notice she received on Tuesday.

“They’re union busting,” Williams said. “I just figured I would automatically be a target.”

What she and others didn’t expect were cuts to areas of research that disproportionately affect minority communities, including Black Americans. A soon-to-be laid-off veteran health scientist working in Atlanta’s CDC headquarters supported Williams’ claim that Black employees were overrepresented among those who were downsized.

The health scientist said she has been placed on administrative leave, thus requesting to remain anonymous to avoid losing her paycheck prior to her scheduled June 2 termination. She said she was one of many CDC researchers in the violence prevention department who worked in areas of clinical study that disproportionately impact Black people and other “marginalized” communities.

“In terms of how far and wide the slashing of our programs, of our divisions, of our center went, it was shocking,” the scientist said.

An additional CDC worker — a veteran public health advisor who hasn’t received a layoff notice, but asked to remain anonymous to avoid being targeted by DOGE — agreed with Williams and the health scientist that the DOGE layoffs disproportionately impacted Black workers, who were overrepresented in affected support service departments such as information technology, human resources, and financial services.

“A vast majority of the workers in those roles are Black and minority,” he said. The public health advisor also agreed that programs receiving the largest budget cuts appear to be in areas of progressive policy research that Trump and his conservative allies oppose and perceive as “woke.”

They include the CDC’s Office of Minority Health, the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity, the entire division of Environmental Health Science and Practice, childhood lead poisoning prevention, and the division of global HIV and tuberculosis study. He said the affected divisions do research beyond U.S. borders.

“Where does all of that money and research and aid go? A lot of it is to sub-Saharan Africa, which is almost exclusively Black,” he said.