On Tuesday morning, Shawn Linman learned he was being terminated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as part of mass layoffs that are disproportionately impacting people who live and work in Maryland.

The scene for Linman was both chaotic and tragic. Some coworkers’ badges stopped working, and they had to be escorted by security to clear their desks. Other laid-off employees included veterans and a new mother on her first day of maternity leave.

Linman did not learn of his termination until after he passed through a long security line and opened his computer. “Everyone was pretty devastated,” he said.

Federal officials have said the department’s workforce would soon shrink by a quarter, or about 20,000 positions, including the 10,000 layoffs that began with emails early Tuesday, layering a sense of dread on top of anxiety about the economy and the nation’s leadership in public health.

According to data reported to Maryland Department of Labor, 2,755 jobs were cut in 11 federal offices across the state, including 90 in Baltimore, 140 in Baltimore County and the remainder in the Washington suburbs of Montgomery, Prince George’s and Frederick counties.

Workers describe scant communication from leadership and a scramble to determine the fate of their coworkers at agencies housed across the state. They include the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Medicaid and Medicaid Services, among others.

Health advocates, scientists, unions and politicians have decried the cuts for their effects on workers, some who have spent their careers in government. They also said they fear for future efforts to ensure public health, food and drug safety and disease treatment and prevention.

Separately, there have been billions of dollars in cuts to federally funded research, a move being challenged in court, including by Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown.

The setbacks to scientific advancement from job and grant terminations is immense, according to one Johns Hopkins University researcher who did not want to be named out of concern they would put their own and others’ jobs at risk.

“It’s going to take a generation to catch back up, and maybe we never do if some of this isn’t reversed,” the researcher said. “The layoffs go layers deep.”

In Maryland, the economic impact is expected to be profound. One in 10 workers in the state is employed by the federal government and more work for government contractors. Cuts by the federal government have also slammed universities and global humanitarian groups based in the state.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary and architect of the cutbacks, said the layoffs and restructuring would save $1.8 billion a year, and refocus the department on improving health. He described the U.S. today as a nation lagging behind most of its peers in overall health.

In a message on the social platform X, he said the layoffs made for “a difficult moment for all of us at HHS. Our hearts go out to those who have lost their jobs. But the reality is clear: what we’ve been doing isn’t working.”

It’s not clear how many of the expected 10,000 reduction-in-force notices have gone out, affecting administrative, scientific, communications and leadership staff. One federal worker still on the job said they have been texting coworkers and even looking for a little green light indicating who is still active on the agency’s video-call service Zoom.

Cuts have been reported at every major federal health agency, including at the NIH in Bethesda, the FDA in Silver Spring, CMS in Woodlawn and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in Rockville.

Several NIH agencies also lease research space for approximately 1,000 people at the Johns Hopkins Bayview campus in Baltimore, including the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Human Genome Research Institute.

Through messages shared with The Baltimore Banner, workers there reported dozens of staff cuts in Baltimore and at headquarters in Bethesda. More cuts were expected, as was a reduction in spending on contracts, which could impact the agencies’ ability to operate.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, said in a statement that “hard-working public servants” are being “kicked to the curb with no regard for the essential public services they provide” and not making the government more efficient.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat representing areas of Montgomery County where some of the agencies are based, said constituents reported being fired by email beginning at 5 a.m. Tuesday. Others faced long lines at work as security checked to see if they still had a job.

The Trump administration, Raskin said in a statement, “is dismantling critical government services that Americans across the country rely upon and inflicting confusion and heartbreak on federal employees.

Raskin’s office has compiled websites with information for federal workers, including about unemployment insurance and worker rights.

At HHS, it had been Shawn Linman’s job to help collect data and publish reports for the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the premier source of information about how drugs and suicide are impacting different communities across the country.

The 32-year-old Bowie resident worked with other statisticians and analysts in an office in Rockville to keep the five-decade-old project running. It aids the government in making decisions on tackling critical health problems, such as the nation’s deadly overdose crisis.

Linman now worries about what the layoffs mean for critical data collection projects that track the drug supply, overdoses and local spikes of overdose deaths.

Policymakers and health providers “will essentially be flying blind with no data to make decisions,” Linman said, adding, “it’s going to cost people their lives.