Just after noon on Friday, word began to trickle down to employees inside the National Cancer Institute that the Musk-led culling of hundreds of thousands of federal employees had reached them as well. According to an email viewed by Splinter, leadership at the NCI, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, warned that about 330 employees who had been hired within the past year would be fired. That’s just under ten percent of the entire NCI workforce.
The email specified that employees would be placed on administrative leave for four weeks, with pay, but would lose access to buildings and systems by the end of the day on Friday. The firing messages were slated to go out between 1 pm and 4:30 pm.
The mass firing is focused on recent hires technically on probationary status because in theory there may be fewer legal obstacles to their ouster. Unions representing federal employees think otherwise, of course, and have vowed to fight. The NCI is the largest funder of cancer research in the world, and oversees a huge swath of the critical trial and basic research done across the US. It is worth repeating: People will die because of this.
The move at NCI is part of a broader purge across the Department of Health and Human Services on Friday, following on similar catastrophes at other agencies. A source inside NIH told Splinter that there is in fact a list of exceptions, presumably based on importance to human health or safety, but the details of that list are unsurprisingly nebulous. “No one at NIH was given a chance to review nor knows who is on it,” the source said. “It is coming from HHS but not sure [who] actually made the list.”
Meanwhile, advice circulated inside NIH for full-time employees — meaning, not just recent hires on probationary status, and including staff scientists — to download and save their official personnel files, including the SF50 forms that document promotions, reassignments, and so on. Because if they are willing to throw grenades like this, who knows where the next one will land.
The thousands of layoffs across HHS came just a day after staff received a very different sort of email. Viewed by Splinter, it invited all HHS staff to a “welcoming ceremony” for newly confirmed HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “Immediately following his remarks,” the email promised, “Secretary Kennedy will personally meet and greet those in attendance. Selfies are welcome!”
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