CIDRAP New poll: Public confidence in CDC for vaccine advice tumbles Stephanie Soucheray, MA October 9, 2025 Support for RFK Jr and MAHA low. The poll also shows low support for both Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr and his MAHA, or “Make America Health Again” movement. Of those polled, 62% disapprove of how Kennedy handles vaccine policy, while only 37% approve. Only 41% “strongly” or “somewhat” approve of how he is handling his job, while 59% disapprove of his job performance. Forty-three percent of those polled say they support MAHA. Support varies widely by political affiliation, with 74% of Republicans favoring the movement, compared with only 22% of Democrats.
There’s really no wonder why. They’re jerking federal workers around bandying about partisan political attacks on people or agencies that Donald Trump personally considers might be his political opposition.
CNN – ‘The damage is beyond repair’: The CDC is facing another round of deep staff cuts By Brenda Goodman The notices were emailed shortly after 9 p.m. on a holiday weekend, following a pattern favored by the Trump administration of carrying out layoffs of federal workers outside of normal business hours. Impacted employees said the move was especially cruel during a government shutdown, which made severance information even harder to get, since many federal workers are not in their offices or able to answer emails. President Donald Trump said late Friday afternoon that he plans to fire “a lot” of federal workers in retaliation for the government shutdown, vowing to target those deemed to be aligned with the Democratic Party. “We figure they started this thing, so they should be Democrat-oriented,” Trump said, placing blame for the shutdown on Democratic lawmakers. Trump did not provide details on what qualified the affected workers as “Democrat-oriented.”
People were fired, and then those firings were reported as rescinded to The New York Times 24 hours later. This is not a way to operate a health agency, clearly.
The New York Times – Trump Administration Is Bringing Back Scores of C.D.C. Experts Fired in Error Friday’s layoffs swept up scientists involved in responding to disease outbreaks and running an influential journal. Officials said the mistaken dismissals were being rescinded. By Apoorva Mandavilli and Sheryl Gay Stolberg – Oct. 11, 2025 Updated 9:01 p.m. ET The Trump administration on Saturday raced to rescind layoffs of hundreds of scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who were mistakenly fired on Friday night in what appeared to be a substantial procedural lapse. Among those wrongly dismissed were the top two leaders of the federal measles response team, those working to contain Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo, members of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, and the team that assembles the C.D.C.’s vaunted scientific journal, The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. After The New York Times reported the dismissals, two federal health officials said on Saturday that many of those workers were being brought back. The officials spoke anonymously in order to disclose internal discussions. The mistakes rocked an agency already in tumult, and which has been a particular target of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The C.D.C. lost about a third of its staff in April; many were rehired weeks later.