According to reports, Donald Trump has ordered a communications blackout at US federal health agencies.
The CDC, FDA, HHS and NIH have all been told to pause external communications, including publishing scientific reports, updating websites or issuing health advisories.
The directive came without warning, sources told the Washington Post, and with few indications of how long it could last.
Health authorities play a critical role in collecting and sharing critical information with the public, including on infectious disease outbreaks, sounding the alarm on foodborne disease outbreaks and food recalls.
However, DailyMail.com received its automated weekly recall email from the FDA this morning at 8am ET.
It is not entirely unusual for new administrations to temporarily suspend external communications, which can be done to help newly appointed officials understand the scope of information being released.
But some said if the pause lasts more than a week or two, it could be considered concerning.
The new president, 78, singled out public health authorities in his inaugural address – saying they “fail to deliver in times of disaster”, citing what many have seen as a mishandling of Covid messaging.
The new Trump administration has ordered a pause in all external communications from federal health agencies (Trump is pictured above yesterday at a press conference in the Roosevelt Room of the White House)
Robert F. Kennedy Junior has been nominated to head HHS, which oversees all federal health agencies.
As part of his “Make America Healthy Again” pledge, he has pledged to overhaul the three agencies.
The communications outage was caused by Stefanie Spear, deputy chief of staff at HHS, who joined the agency this week. She was also the press secretary for RFK Jr. during his presidential campaign.
The pause in external communications includes blocks on publishing scientific reports issued by the CDC known as Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports (MMWR), advisories sent to physicians in the CDC health network, data updates on the CDC website and public health data released. from the National Center for Health Statistics, including drug overdose deaths.
The CDC is expected to release several MMWR reports this week, sources familiar with the matter say, including three on the bird flu outbreak that is alarming scientists.
It was not clear whether the directive also blocked agencies from sharing urgent communications, for example on drug approvals or outbreaks of new diseases.
Dr. Lucky Tran, a Democratic-leaning science communicator at Columbia University, characterized the order as the beginning of censorship.
Jeff Jarvis, a retired journalism professor at City University New York, said: “This is terrible: enforced ignorance of health data.
“Officials in healthy and scientific states must work together to report data on their own. We need such shadow governments.'
The CDC publishes an average of about 50 peer-reviewed articles per week, in addition to updating numerous data sets and other materials, while the FDA initiates more than 500 food recalls per year.
The CDC receives approximately $24.9 billion in public funding each year, while the FDA costs $8.4 billion and the NIH costs more than $47 billion annually.
Early in Trump's first term, administration officials also asked public health agencies to stop communicating with the public, it was reported at the time.
At the time, the limits appeared to target agencies that oversee environmental and science policy, such as the Environmental Protection Agency.
