Once the global leader in public health, the CDC is now a “zombified” version of its former powerhouse status after staffing and budget cuts, and ongoing interference from political appointees, according to 30 current and former CDC employees who spoke with The New York Times.
“It’s a zombified CDC where you have all the bits and pieces — like the body’s there, the substance is there, but it’s not acting like how an agency like that should act,” Demetre Daskalakis, MD, who led the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases before resigning in August 2025, told the Times.
Here is the current state of the CDC.
1. The Trump administration’s widespread layoffs in 2025 cut 18% of the CDC’s staff, and the agency’s workforce has dwindled more as employees have retired or resigned. More than 1,200 retired between March 2025 and May 2026, quadruple the number in 2023 to 2024. About 270 other staff are on administrative leave while a pending lawsuit that challenges the layoffs makes its way through court.
2. Entire CDC divisions have been closed, including those focused on smoking, sexual violence, child abuse and falls among older adults. Several departments — including ones aimed at preventing chronic diseases, autism and birth defects — have faced large workforce cuts and now operate with half the staff. The CDC’s infectious disease centers were spared layoffs, but still lost nearly 300 employees, and the respiratory disease center lost nearly 200 people.
3. Leadership positions also remain unfilled, with only one of the 11 center directors from March 2025 remaining at the agency. Most of the centers are run by acting directors.
4. Remaining CDC employees are backfilling vacant roles, and many divisions are struggling to disburse money from Congress. For example, the CDC’s public health infrastructure grant, which helps train health department employees and build systems, is now only managed by three staff, and response times have gone from less than a day to more than 10.
5. CDC workers report having little contact with the World Health Organization, members of Congress or even state and local health departments. They also said HHS tightly controls statements to the media.
6. Typically, two or three political appointees oversee the CDC, but under the Trump administration, nearly 20 political appointees from HHS oversee the agency and direct them on where to spend time and funds, the Times reported. Employees report being directed to investigate “dubious theories” or issues outside their scope of work, including exploring whether immunizing pregnant women led to autism in children — a theory that has been debunked by numerous studies, — asked to pull details of every measles case since 2010 including patients’ underlying medical conditions with diagnostic codes, directed to look into cod liver oil as a treatment for measles due to historical references dating back to the 1700s, and requests to focus on screwworm infections, which affect cattle.
7. Some had hoped that the CDC’s new director, Erica Schwartz, MD, would reduce political interference after her pledge to “follow the science.” However, she has not yet made public statements about childhood vaccines or corrected misinformation from Mr. Kennedy, but she did order agency employees to challenge Pennsylvania’s announcement of two measles deaths, which is against standard procedure.
8. The CDC’s vaccine advisers have not met since December, and the agency has not issued updated vaccine recommendations.
9. Hiring red tape is also causing issues for the agency. The CDC’s global health center was approved to fill 18 positions, but the offers expired before HHS completed next steps, so the interview process had to be restarted. By law, CDC employees who were laid off have priority to be rehired, but some reported being told they were ineligible for jobs they previously held for years. Between March 2025 and May 2026, the agency hired 108 employees, compared with more than 1,500 hired between March 2023 and May 2024.
10. The agency’s dysfunction has alarmed public health experts around the world, and some told the Times that public health systems are less prepared and capable of a coordinated response than before the pandemic. The budget for the department that handles Ebola and other deadly diseases dropped by 36%, and only about 100 CDC staff members were deployed to Congo to aid with the outbreak, compared to about 2,000 who aided in the 2014 Ebola outbreak. Fewer staff are willing to take travel assignments, too.
“If you’re doing your job and your boss’s job who left, and you also have three staff people who left under you,” Fiona Havers, MD, who resigned from the CDC in June 2025, told the Times, “no one has the spare capacity to help out in something that’s not in their field.”
