Yolanda Jacobs, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 2883, said she has seen shutdowns before during her career in government service, but none like this.
“None have been as egregious as what we’re seeing where a group of people are being targeted time after time after time after time,” the union leader said. “I mean, even our budget director, the administration’s budget director, is saying that the whole point is to traumatize federal employees.”
Last week’s firings at the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention come after an earlier round of layoffs, an assault by a gunman in August on the CDC headquarters and attacks by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has called the agency a “cesspool of corruption.”
Jacobs talked to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution journalists Tia Mitchell and Greg Bluestein about the layoffs that have roiled the agency on Thursday’s “Politically Georgia” podcast.
The Trump administration last week fired hundreds of top-level CDC scientists, although some of those firings were quickly reversed.
“Politically Georgia” producer Natalie Mendenhall talked to former and current CDC employees affected by the firings.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
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