Donald Trump has ordered a communications blackout at America’s federal health agencies, according to reports.
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 little guidance as to how long it may last.
The health agencies play a vital role in gathering and sharing critical information with the public, including on outbreaks of infectious diseases, raising the alarm over foodborne disease outbreaks and food recalls.
However, DailyMail.com received its automated weekly FDA recall email at 8am ET this morning.
It is not entirely unusual for incoming administrations to pause external communications temporarily, which may be done to help newly appointed officials understand the scope of information that is being released.
But some said that if the pause lasts longer than a week or two then it could be seen as concerning.
The new president, 78, singled out public health agencies in his inaugural address — saying that they ‘do not deliver in times of disaster’, referring to what many have seen as a mishandling of Covid messaging.
The incoming Trump administration has ordered a pause on all external communications from the federal health agencies (Trump is pictured above at a news conference in the Roosevelt Room of the White House yesterday)
Robert F. Kennedy Junior has been nominated to head up the HHS, which has oversight over all the federal health agencies.
As part of his ‘Make America Healthy Again’ pledge, he has promised to overhaul the three agencies.
The communications blackout was issued by Stefanie Spear, a deputy chief of staff at HHS who joined the agency this week. She was also RFK Jr.’s press secretary during his presidential campaign.
The pause on external communications includes blocks on publishing scientific reports issued by the CDC, known as Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports (MMWR), advisories sent out to clinicians on the CDC’s health network, data updates to the CDC website, and public health data released from the National Center for Health Statistics, including on drug overdose deaths.
The CDC had been scheduled to publish several MMWR reports this week, sources familiar with the matter said, including three on the bird flu outbreak alarming scientists.
It was not clear whether the directive also blocked the agencies from sharing urgent communications, such as on drug approvals or novel disease outbreaks.
Dr Lucky Tran, a Democrat-leaning science communicator at Columbia University, blasted the order as the beginning of censorship.
Jeff Jarvis, a retired professor of journalism at City University New York, said: ‘This is terrible: Forced ignorance on health data.
‘Officials in sane and scientific states must band together to report data on their own. We need such shadow governments.’
The CDC publishes on average about 50 peer-reviewed articles per week, in addition to updating numerous datasets and other materials, while the FDA initiates more than 500 food recalls per year.
The CDC receives about $24.9billion in public funding every year, while the FDA costs $8.4billion and the NIH costs more than $47billion annually.
At the beginning of Trump’s first term, administration officials also asked public health agencies to cease communicating with the public it was reported at the time.
At that time, the limits appeared focused on agenices overseeing environmental and scientific policy, such as the Environmental Protection Agency.
