Axios reports:

Centuries’ worth of experience walked out of key government agencies this summer, including high-level departures from the CDC, Pentagon and intelligence community just in the past week.

Why it matters: President Trump and his allies believe the “Deep State,” scientific establishment and federal bureaucracy were overdue for a purge. They’re ushering in a government in which the officials maintaining nuclear weapons, monitoring medical trials or guarding state secrets have shorter resumes and smaller staffs — likely for many years to come.

Driving the news: Three of the CDC’s top scientists resigned this week after director Susan Monarez was fired, with hundreds of staffers staging a walkout in support of their outgoing colleagues and opposition to HHS leadership.

• Demetre Daskalakis, who resigned as the CDC’s vaccine chief, claimed Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his team were manipulating data “to achieve a political end.”
• He also warned that the hollowing out of agencies like his would leave the U.S. ill prepared for future public health emergencies, telling the NYT: “We really are losing the people who know how to do this.”
• Kennedy, who once called the CDC a “cesspool of corruption,” said Thursday that “there’s a lot of trouble at CDC, and it’s going to require getting rid of some people over the long term… to change the institutional culture.”

Zoom out: Around 3,000 CDC staffers have resigned or been fired since January. Agencies like the FDA and National Institutes of Health have also shed thousands of staff, including many highly trained scientists.

• The exodus of expertise has also affected roles focused on cyber defense, nuclear safety, extreme weather forecasting and disaster response.

[Continue reading…]