The CDC’s team dealing with the Freedom of Information Act and the Food and Drug Administration’s request as part of Tuesday’s Broad layoffs order Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said, multiple officials said.
The process of meeting FOIA requests from journalists, advocacy groups and others is a key way for the public to obtain government data and record information.
All workers in the CDC FOIA office were cut, two officials said. Two-thirds of the FDA's records were also cut, with 50 remaining.
“Most of them are still not doing FOIA here. They conduct litigation and other types of disclosures,” an FDA official said.
It is not clear what will happen to the hundreds of pending requests before the agency.
“For most types of FOIA requirements, there are no personnel,” FDA officials said.
Many FOIA employees at the National Institutes of Health have also been released, but not all, according to an official. The official said there was no explanation for why some were cut while others were still working, which clearly violated the federal government's procedures based on military and federal services.
HHS officials said the purpose of the cut is to create a central location to handle FOIA requests across the department, which makes it easier for the public to submit their requests.
The official said that despite exactly what the new FOIA process for HHS is like, their goal is to continue the work started by current staff.
Layouts are officials say the department's public affairs store is led by Kennedy's former campaign press secretary Stefanie Spear communication Issued by health agencies.
Staff in the department are already tightening supervision of agencies that release public information, including unprecedented steps Control Science Publishing in CDC.
Communication staff were also one of the most severely attacked on layoffs, several officials said. Teams within the Public Affairs Department of the CDC, FDA and the Health Resources and Services Administration have seen many or all staff cuts.
At a White House meeting earlier this month, Kennedy listed dozens of communications teams in the department, taking “redundancy” as an example.
Kennedy also responded to past administration criticism of FOIA, supporting litigation to speed up or expand responses to record requests.
“Public health agencies should be transparent. If we want Americans to restore trust in public health agencies, we need transparency.” Kennedy said at a Senate hearing in January.
