HHS Eliminates FOIA Teams At CDC, FDA, And NIH

NPR reports:

Teams that fulfilled requests for government documents lost their jobs on Tuesday as part of the Trump administration’s 10,000-person staff cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services. Their work, mandated by Congress since the 1960s under the Freedom of Information Act or FOIA, gives the public a view of the inner workings of federal health agencies.

Public records teams were entirely cut at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and other agencies on Tuesday, according to multiple current and former staffers who did not want to be named because of fears of retribution.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has promised “radical transparency,” but the firings suggest that promise is a “lie,” says Jason R. Baron, a former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration.

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