Trump administration lays off FDA employees, Stat News reports

(Reuters) - The Trump administration terminated employees at the Food and Drug Administration on Saturday night, Stat News reported, citing sources.

It wasn't immediately clear how many FDA employees were affected nor how many parts of the agency may be involved, the report said, adding that some of those cut worked in the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health.

The FDA did not immediately respond to request for comments outside regular business hours.

The layoffs began on Friday with almost half of the probationary workers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others at the National Institutes of Health being forced out as President Donald Trump overhauls government agencies, Reuters reported.

About 5,200 probationary employees across the Department of Health and Human Services were being let go, STAT News reported. This includes those at the FDA, NIH and CDC.

The U.S. government began firing thousands of people at multiple agencies on Thursday as Trump and billionaire Elon Musk accelerate their purge of America's federal bureaucracy, Reuters reported.



(Reporting by Disha Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Mark Porter)