Donald Trump’s administration can’t stop mis-firing.
The Department of Agriculture is scrambling to rescind the terminations of “several” agency employees who were working to address the bird flu outbreak, amid sweeping layoffs at the behest of Trump, Elon Musk, and the Department of Government Efficiency.
A USDA spokesperson released a statement Tuesday saying, “Although several positions supporting [bird flu efforts] were notified of their terminations over the weekend, we are working to swiftly rectify the situation and rescind those letters.”
The spokesperson said that “USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service frontline positions are considered public safety positions,” and noted that several positions at the agency had been exempted from cuts, promising that the USDA is continuing to “prioritize the response to highly pathogenic avian influenza.”
Politico reported Sunday that USDA’s 14-person National Animal Health Laboratory Network program office, which coordinates laboratories working on the government’s response to animal disease outbreaks, had been hit by the Trump administration’s sweeping layoffs.
“They’re the front line of surveillance for the entire outbreak,” Keith Poulsen, the director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, told Politico. “They’re already underwater and they are constantly short-staffed, so if you take all the probationary staff out, you’ll take out the capacity to do the work.”
This isn’t the first time Trump and Musk’s sweeping cuts have chopped off a limb sorely needed. Last week, 300 employees who oversee the U.S.’s nuclear stockpile were fired from the National Nuclear Security Administration, and then quickly invited to return to their highly essential jobs.
Earlier this month, Trump’s new Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said that the agency had invited Musk’s DOGE team in with “open arms,” and promised that layoffs would be “forthcoming.” The White House has stated that DOGE doesn’t make the cuts to federal agencies and departments itself, but rather advises the heads of those agencies on where to trim the fat—or in this case, crucial staff.
Members of the House Agriculture Committee weren’t too pleased with the mistake, according to NBC News.
“They need to be more cautious,” Republican Representative Don Bacon told NBC News, referring to the DOGE team. “There’s an old saying, ‘Measure twice, cut once.’ Well, they are measuring once and having to cut twice. Some of this stuff they’re going to have to return back. I just wish they’d make a better decision up front.”
So far, the bird flu outbreak has led to the death of 22 million birds in the last 30 days, sent the price of eggs skyrocketing, infected 68 people, and resulted in the death of one person. But some experts believe that it can, and will, get worse.
Robert Redfield, the former director for the Centers for Disease Control, told Politico Tuesday that COVID-19 “was a minor epidemic compared to the epidemic that’s coming, which is a bird flu pandemic.”
Redfield warned that “this is not a time to cut our ability to have a rapid public health response agency.”
