Late-night HHS actions removed more than 1,000 CDC and HHS employees, including teams handling infectious disease surveillance and outbreak response, prompting immediate alarm from public-health leaders and former agency officials. Reporting by major outlets and a crowdsourced list of layoff notices described terminations across divisions responsible for measles, Ebola and the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Officials later indicated some layoffs were made in error and that a portion of staff would be reinstated; internal sources and former CDC leaders, including Dr. Demetre Daskalakis and Dr. Debra Houry, publicly criticized the move. The dismissals occurred amid a broader federal workforce reduction tied to a government shutdown and have raised operational concerns about ongoing surveillance and response capacity. Public-health partners, global surveillance networks, and academic collaborators have been alerted to potential disruptions. Agencies will need to reconcile personnel changes with continuity plans for active outbreak investigations and long-running surveillance platforms.