The Trump administration has revised the number of terminated workers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to 1,165, down from an initial 1,500, according to an internal NIH email seen by Reuters. The email, sent Saturday night, indicated that some names were removed while others may have been added.
Affected employees, around 6% of NIH’s 20,000 staff, will be placed on administrative leave starting Monday. They have received termination letters and will remain on leave for four weeks before being officially dismissed, an NIH official confirmed.
The cuts align with Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s prior pledge to fire 600 NIH workers, though it remains unclear if they were part of this round of layoffs. Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, has been critical of the NIH, FDA, and CDC—agencies now under his leadership.
Additionally, the Trump administration terminated employees at the FDA on Saturday night, with some cuts reportedly affecting the Center for Devices and Radiological Health, according to Stat News. The number of affected FDA employees remains unclear.
Overall, about 5,200 probationary employees across the Department of Health and Human Services, including the NIH, FDA, and CDC, are being dismissed, accounting for 6% of its 80,000 workforce. The CDC saw half of its probationary staff cut on Friday.
The layoffs mark an aggressive restructuring as Trump and billionaire Elon Musk push forward with a broad purge of the federal bureaucracy, impacting multiple agencies since Thursday.
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