The campus of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is seen in Atlanta, on Wednesday, June 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)
It was another weekend of chaos and uncertainty for federal employees at the Atlanta-based United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Late Friday, the Trump administration’s firings of more than 4,000 federal workers included more than a thousand at the CDC.
The long list of affected CDC departments included a “disease detectives” team that responds to outbreaks, the CDC Library, a worker health and safety office and experts who produce a weekly scientific journal widely read by public health researchers worldwide called the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Then, on Saturday, 700 CDC dismissal notices were reversed.
An Atlanta CDC employee, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly, said the administration blamed a “coding error” for the mistaken terminations.
“No one is buying it,” the longtime agency employee said.
The reinstated workers remain furloughed during the federal government shutdown — but not fired. For now.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the CDC, defended the latest round of Trump administration terminations in an emailed statement:
“HHS employees across multiple divisions have received reduction-in-force notices as a direct consequence of the Democrat-led government shutdown. HHS under the Biden administration became a bloated bureaucracy, growing its budget by 38% and its workforce by 17%. All HHS employees receiving reduction-in-force notices were designated non-essential by their respective divisions. HHS continues to close wasteful and duplicative entities, including those that are at odds with the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda.”
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents more than 800,000 government workers nationwide, is suing as part of a federal lawsuit challenging the administration’s mass firings.
The union condemned the terminations as “an unlawful abuse of power designed to punish workers and pressure Congress.”
“It is disgraceful that the Trump administration has used the government shutdown as an excuse to illegally fire thousands of workers who provide critical services to communities across the country. These workers show up every day to serve the American people, and for the past nine months have been met with nothing but cruelty and viciousness from President Trump,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in a statement.
“Every single American citizen should be outraged. Federal workers are tired of being used as pawns for the political and personal gains of the elected and un-elected leaders. It’s time for Congress to do their jobs and negotiate an end to this shutdown immediately. In AFGE’s 93 years of existence under several presidential administrations – including during Trump’s first term – no president has ever decided to fire thousands of furloughed workers during a government shutdown.”
The government shutdown began Oct. 1 after Congressional lawmakers failed to agree to a funding deal.
At issue are enhanced premium tax credits that have made Affordable Care Act marketplace insurance plans more affordable for millions of Americans over the last few years.
Congressional Democrats are pushing for an extension of the subsidies. Republicans are pushing for a funding deal without including the ACA subsidy extension.
More than three-quarters of Americans across political parties, including most Republicans, say they want Congress to extend the subsidies, according to a KFF Health News survey.
“Views of the 2010 ACA are still largely partisan with large majorities of Democrats continuing to view the law favorably while two-thirds of Republicans hold unfavorable views of the legislation. Yet, at the same time, majorities of Democrats (92%) and Republicans (59%) think Congress should extend these expiring tax credits. This includes a majority of the most ardent base of Republican lawmakers – supporters of the MAGA movement, 57% of whom say they want to see the tax credits extended,” the poll found.
The premium tax credits are set to expire at the end of 2025. Without the extension, KFF data show that premiums nationwide are expected to rise by more than double, on average, next year.
And most people KFF polled said the cost increases would “disrupt their finances,” with 4 in 10 saying they’d end up uninsured.
More than 24 million Americans have marketplace health insurance, including more than 1.5 million Georgians — a record number.
Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia is shown here at a press conference in June 2021.
Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has previously opposed the ACA, told news outlet The Hill that the potential for price hikes on health insurance is a “crisis” for the country.
“When people are working paycheck to paycheck, they can’t make ends meet. And we are looking at a massive spike in health insurance premiums. It’s going to crush people,” Greene said in The Hill interview.
Georgia Congressional Democrats are also pushing to extend the subsidies.
“More than 20 million Americans will see their health insurance premiums double next year without Congressional action, while President Trump continues to refuse to work on a solution. As President Trump said himself in 2011, ‘if there is a shutdown, I think it would be a tremendously negative mark on the President of the United States. He’s the one who has to get people together … the President of the United States has to get this done,’” Georgia Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff said in a statement.
Many Georgians with marketplace insurance are already seeing how much their premiums could spike next year.
Window shopping is underway through Georgia’s recently launched state-based insurance marketplace, Georgia Access, ahead of ACA open enrollment for coverage next year, which will begin on Nov. 1.
