The government shutdown will pass the two-week mark tonight after a continuing resolution

failed in the Senate once again. Neither side seems close to resuming talks. For its part,

the president's team posted on social media that it's, quote, making every preparation

to batten down the hatches and ride out the shutdown. The White House also threatened to

continue laying off federal

workers. Just this past weekend, roughly 1,300 employees at the Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention received notices that they were fired. Then, as the administration realized it had

fired some key staff, reportedly half of them were reinstated the next day. The whiplash still leaves the agency

without many crucial professionals. To break down the impact, I spoke earlier today with Dr.

Nirov Shah. He's former principal deputy director of the CDC, now a visiting professor at

Colby College. Dr. Shah, welcome to the News Hour. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you for having me, Omna. So from the folks you talked to and from what you've seen, for so many people at the CDC

to have been fired and then rehired, even with these lingering threats of more continued layoffs

to come, what kind of impact is that having on folks at the CDC?

It has an impact in two ways.

The first is this sort of whiplash with being fired one day, rehired the next.

It suggests that there's managerial incompetence at play.

But the second thing that it does, particularly for the staff, is it's a morale killer.

Morale at the CDC was already exceedingly low.

Indeed, not more than two months ago, the CDC was literally attacked by a gunman who fired over 500 rounds at the building.

That alone would be sufficient to kill the morale of any organization.

But now this whiplash of firings and rehirings means that morale at the agency is exceptionally low.

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