Trump Administration Temporarily Silences Federal Health Officials

The Trump administration, in a swift move to clamp down on health and science agencies, canceled a number of scientific meetings and instructed federal health officials to refrain from all public communications, including upcoming reports focusing on the escalating bird flu crisis in country.

Experts serving on external advisory panels on topics ranging from antibiotic resistance to deafness received emails on Wednesday informing them that their meetings had been canceled.

The cancellations followed an order issued Tuesday by the acting director of the federal Department of Health and Human Services that banned public release any public announcements until reviewed by a presidential appointee or designee, according to federal officials and an internal memo reviewed by The Fresh York Times.

The directive requires that “regulations, guidelines and other public documents and communications”, including any “notices”, “grant announcements”, press releases, speeches or official correspondence with public officials, be made publicly available, pending their consent.

The novel tightening applies to messages sent to email groups and social media posts, and included a ban on posting notices in the Federal Register, without which many official processes cannot proceed. Some notices sent by the Biden administration in its final week were quickly withdrawn.

The cancellations and communication restrictions sent chills through Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staff and the broader scientific community. The directive was first reported by The Washington Post.

Representatives from the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration declined to comment. The moratorium is to apply until February 1.

The fallout was immediate.

CDC officials were prepared to release an influential weekly morbidity and mortality report Thursday that would include several items related to the expanding bird flu epidemic on dairy and poultry farms.

The weekly reports have been called “the holiest of holies” and are a key means of communicating public health developments. This week’s release was withheld as a result of the order, according to two federal health officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Upcoming meetings of external health advisory panels have been canceled, according to panel members who spoke anonymously for fear of retaliation. For example, meetings to review grant applications submitted to the National Institutes of Health were canceled.

Members of the Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria were told that their two-day meeting scheduled for next Tuesday and Wednesday was canceled “as the novel administration considers its plan for managing federal policy and public communications.”

Those who pre-registered for the gala dinner were told they would receive a “full refund within 48 hours” of receiving the email.

The directive was signed by Dr. Dorothy Fink, acting secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. A confirmation hearing for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom President Trump nominated to head the department, is not expected for at least another week.

The administration has not yet named an acting director of the CDC or an acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, which is usually one of the first moves of a novel administration.

The communications blackout comes alongside a number of other changes facing federal workers since Trump’s inauguration on Monday, including a hiring freeze, an end to remote work and the closure of diversity, equity and inclusion offices and programs.

Delayed Wednesday, Dr. Fink issued another directive aimed at ending diversity and inclusion efforts at HHS and warned against efforts to “mask these programs with coded or imprecise language.” Her letter also encouraged employees to report co-workers who were not following the regulations.

Former federal officials said it’s not uncommon for a novel administration to restrict communications during the initial transition, but the scope and duration of the latest pause were unexpected.

Staffers in the incoming Trump administration did not operate the transition period to meet with federal health officials and become familiar with the agencies.

And while a communications blackout is not unusual, previous administrations have not restricted scientific publications such as MMWR or health guidelines because of their critical importance to the public good.

“It is not unusual for a novel administration to want to centralize communications.” said Dr. Richard Besser, CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and former acting director of the CDC

“It is unusual to withhold all communications from an agency where one of its most crucial responsibilities is to inform the public,” he added.

Privately, several federal officials said they were unsure whether the restriction on communications with the Federal Register covers health data. Some officials seemed unaware of the restrictions at all.

Much of the concern has focused on the CDC, whose responsibilities certainly include public communications. For example, the agency recently made doctors and patients aware of the potential health risks associated with the emerging multiple variant and outbreak of Marburg disease in Rwanda.

The agency presented findings on the impact of the pandemic on the mental health of health care workers and novel guidance expanding pneumococcal vaccine recommendations, and warned of an raise in the incidence of tularemia, a occasional infectious disease, in the United States.

State and city health officials rely on CDC notices to make decisions about their communities, such as when to raise flu testing or what symptoms of the disease to watch for, said Chrissie Juliano, executive director of the Massive Cities Health Coalition, which represents executives municipal public health departments.

While much of this information may be delayed by a few days, she said she hopes the administration has a plan to disseminate more urgent public health information, especially IN due to the bird flu epidemic.

Last year, the bird flu virus, called H5N1, affected dozens of animal species and more than 35 million wild and commercial birds, causing egg prices to skyrocket. At least 67 people also became infected; in December, the country recorded the first human death related to bird flu.

“Can something like bird flu turn around in 10 days?” – said Mrs. Juliana. “Yes. I hope that if these signals are noticed at the federal level, the word will spread.”

Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health and a former Covid czar in the Biden administration, said the communication blackout was most likely the result of the Trump administration’s “particularly bumpy” transition to the White House rather than a coordinated attempt to withhold information.

Still, public health experts are concerned about any changes to access to federal health data. Memories of Trump’s last term, during which political appointees repeatedly interfered with CDC reports and falsified guidance documents, are still raw.

“I think if it happens after February 1, we will have a much more grave problem,” Dr. Jha said.