The Trump administration escalated its campaign to fire federal workers during the government shutdown, seizing the opportunity to further slash the already diminished CDC.

On Tuesday, the union that represents workers at the CDC said that the agency’s workforce has already been reduced by a quarter since the beginning of the year. During the shutdown, the public health agency, which steered U.S. health policy through the pandemic, has found itself in the crosshairs of the Trump administration once again.

Over the weekend, around 1,300 CDC employees received layoff notices. By Saturday, the agency rescinded roughly 700 of the planned terminations, saying that the additional unintended layoffs were due to a “coding error.” The CDC layoffs are part of a new round of mass layoffs that have

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