Jon Ossoff turns Trump’s CDC cuts into 2026 rallying cry

As the crowd’s attention swung back to Ossoff, who answered bluntly. He said he long felt a “surge of pride” that Atlanta is the epicenter of the fight for global health, and that he’d use all his powers as a U.S. senator to defend CDC staffers.

Credit: Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Credit: Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“But I have to level with you. There is no button that I can simply press that I’m not pressing or some tool or procedure that I can use that I’m not using that will reverse what they’re doing,” he said.

“Ultimately, it will come down to whether or not the American people see and understand that they’re being put at risk, not just for the next six months but for the next 60 years by the destruction of our public health infrastructure and research.”

Moments later, he put it a different way.

“Ultimately, the only path out of this is to regain power in Congress,” he said.

Ossoff is waging a tough battle for a second term, and Democrats are hoping to flip control of the Senate and the House in next year’s midterm. With that in mind, Ossoff is transforming Trump’s government-shrinking efforts and sharp cuts to public health services into a central theme of his 2026 campaign.

Throughout the hourlong town hall, he repeatedly pledged he was fully in the corner of laid-off health workers, including the group of more than a dozen current and former CDC staffers who took up a row at the Cobb Civic Center event. They are part of a group that styles themselves online as “Fired But Fighting.”

There is a broad frustration from some Trump critics upset that Ossoff and other Democrats aren’t finding more aggressive ways to obstruct Trump’s plan to dismantle federal agencies in the name of cutting waste, fraud and abuse.

Credit: Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Credit: Atlanta Journal-Constitution

At one point, Ossoff faced a scathing question from Kate Denny, an activist who implored him to push to impeach Trump and find other ways to obstruct his agenda.

“You can do more,” she said, her voice rising. “Think outside the box.”

Ossoff, perhaps the most vulnerable Senate Democratic incumbent on the ballot next year, didn’t disagree with her appeal. But he also leveled with her.

“My job is to be honest with you: The only way to achieve what you want to achieve is to have a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives,” he said. “And believe me, I’m working on it every single day.”

‘A little rightsizing’

The mass layoffs at the CDC have quickly become a symbol in Georgia of Trump’s second-term push to shrink the federal government and dismantle government agencies.

Just weeks into his new administration, the Department of Government Efficiency initiative led by Elon Musk cut hundreds of workers at the CDC who had recently been hired or promoted and were in a probationary period. Thousands more have since been laid off from the Atlanta-based agency, which started the year with roughly 13,000 staffers.

There’s still no public accounting of who was let go from the CDC or the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the agency. That silence has only fueled more confusion and deepened frustration, particularly as legal challenges over the firings work their way through the courts.

Even deeper cuts could be on the horizon as the Trump administration begins negotiating the CDC’s future budget and considers an overhaul of the federal government’s public health work. Supporters say the downsizing is a necessary purge of bureaucracy to reduce waste and tame a spiraling federal deficit.

Credit: Daniel Varnado/For the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Credit: Daniel Varnado/For the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

But current and former CDC workers say the cuts are chaotic — and sometimes deliberately cruel. In one case, the staff that managed a key infant mortality database was fired, though the database remains live on the government’s website.

And some workers with decades of experience say they learned about the job cuts through Musk’s gleeful social media posts and the sudden appearance of DOGE tech workers at their campus.

They were told to soon expect a notification — then spent days anxiously awaiting a dispatch. Many ultimately received automated emails saying they were terminated for poor performance even though they had glowing recent reviews.

Top Georgia Republicans have either backed the Trump administration’s moves or sidestepped the issue altogether. Gov. Brian Kemp, a potential 2026 challenger to Ossoff, said earlier this year that “government can stand a little rightsizing” when asked about the firings.

Credit: AJC

Credit: AJC

And after a fiery February town hall, U.S. Rep. Rich McCormick of Suwanee encouraged the White House to slow the pace of the layoffs — but not stop them.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, meanwhile, said in an interview this week that he was he was focused on helping laid off CDC employees “leverage” their experience so they can start new firms in Georgia.

At the town hall, Ossoff lashed out at Trump for using “fear and intimidation and coercion in a campaign of vengeance” and blasted Republican leaders for not doing more to fight back.

“The war on the CDC is so foolish, so shortsighted, so without any rational policy justification that every single Georgian — and by the way, that includes the governor of Georgia — should oppose it.”

That led to a swift retort from Kemp spokesman Garrison Douglas, who said the Republican has helped “generate unprecedented investment and job creation” and knocked Ossoff for voting against a GOP measure to bar transgender girls from competing in women’s sports.

“The governor does not need a lecture on rational policy justification from a senator who voted to keep men playing in women’s sports,” he said.