This story was updated at 8:30 a.m. on Monday, Feb. 17, 2025.
The Trump administration’s sweeping jobs cuts have reached Georgia’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is expected to lose about one-tenth of its workforce, the Associated Press has reported.
The administration’s broad plan to cut probationary employees will result in the loss of nearly 1,300 jobs at the CDC, according to the AP. CDC leaders were notified Friday morning.
The cuts are part of the new administration’s aggressive plans to reduce the size of the federal government.
“President Trump’s indefensible, indiscriminate firing of more than 1,000 CDC personnel in a single day leaves Americans exposed to disease and devastates careers and livelihoods for the world’s most talented doctors and scientists, many of them here in Georgia,” Georgia U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, posted online Friday.
U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, also a Democrat, said the cuts were part of “Trump administration’s reckless attacks on public health.”
“Make no mistake—these firings mean Americans are less safe from future pandemics. I will do everything I can to fight this,” Warnock posted online.
While on an overseas trip this weekend to the Munich Security Conference, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp seemed unconcerned about the layoffs during an interview with Politico and referred to some belt-tightening on the state level done by his own administration.
“I know they had some layoffs at the CDC and other things, but government can stand a little right-sizing,” Kemp said.
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