Trump’s HHS Orders a Communication ‘Pause’ at CDC, FDA, NIH
Trump hits the elite health regulators with an executive MOAB, freeing Americans from captivity of the scientific-technical elite.
It seems the regulatory Reign of Error is beginning to end.
Legal Insurrection readers may recall my many posts on the bureaucratic bumbling that 1) Led to the creation of the novel coronavirus and 2) promulgated the policy disasters of the COVID lockdowns, masking requirements, and COVID mandates.
To cap it off, “coronavirus advisor” Dr. Deborah Birx used the bureaucracy to countermand President Donald Trump’s orders to reopen the country.
Professor Jacobson just noted that Trump’s executive orders took a sledgehammer to the DEI industry.
Well, Trump’s new Health and Human Services (HHS) team just hit the elite health regulators with MOAB.
Trump’s team has just ordered a temporary communication ‘pause’ for major federal health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and National Institutes of Health (NIH).
This directive, effective immediately until February 1, 2025, requires a presidential appointee to approve all external communications from these agencies before release.
The scope of this communication pause includes:
- Data updates
- Scientific publications
- Health advisories
- Website updates
- Social media posts
- Reports
- Regulations and guidance
- Press statements
- Public speaking engagements
Some of those impacted are saying that this is normal practice for transitions. However, they note the requirement for approvals is unusual.
Mitch Zeller, who was director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products from 2013 to 2022, says it is “not unusual” for an incoming administration to issue a temporary pause on publications. “They want to get up to speed on stuff that would otherwise be coming out before they’ve all even gotten their IDs laminated,” Zeller says.
It is less standard—and more concerning—for the White House to request review of scientific documents, he says. During his tenure with the FDA, White House communications staff were “almost never involved” in agency announcements unless it was an “extremely high-profile, once-in-a-decade kind of announcement,” Zeller says.
I am not sure why this review process starts on Feb. 1. Perhaps he anticipates Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and the rest of his health team in place at that time.
Interestingly, the 2025 team is more loyal to the bosses and proactive than the 2021 team.
Stefanie Spear, an HHS deputy chief of staff, instructed agency staff Tuesday morning to pause external communications, according to two people familiar with the discussions. Spear, who joined HHS this week, is a longtime ally of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the agency.
Spear did not immediately respond to a request for comment. HHS did not respond to a request for comment. An FDA spokesperson declined to comment and referred questions to HHS. A CDC spokesperson referred questions to HHS.
Funding for travel and grants has also been paused.
On Wednesday, NIH employees received an email saying that all government travel is suspended until further notice “in compliance with guidance from HHS.”
“Staff currently on official government travel can complete their trip, as long as they are not presenting, but must return to their original point of departure,” the email, which was shared with NBC News, read. “Future requests for any reason are not authorized.”
Also Wednesday, some scientists on social media posted frustrations that the NIH had stopped approving money for research grants through its review groups, called study sections. It’s unclear whether the move is part of the HHS communications pause.
Without grants, scientists are unable to start any new research, from asthma and pediatric cancer to Covid and Ebola. The NIH awards more than 60,000 grants each year, supporting at least 300,000 researchers.
Of course, the bureaucrats in these impacted agencies…apparently unused to accountability for the experimentation and fear-mongering….are bitterly complaining.
“Not a day goes by when CDC isn’t tracking a potential threat to our health,” Dr. Richard Besser, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and former acting director of the CDC said in a statement.
“Right now they are letting us know about bird flu in cows, birds, and people. Every time there is an outbreak involving a food, they let us know how to avoid getting sick. They let us know where diseases are occurring around the world that could affect our health here or if we travel.
Cutting off communications from CDC puts our health at risk and prevents our doctors, nurses, and public health leaders in our communities from doing their jobs. I urge the administration to quickly lift the pause.”
I argue that this is the first time that a politician has tried to free the American people from captivity by the scientific-technological elite.
I have been covering the topics of monkeypox, bird flu, COVID-19, and a host of other issues for quite some time at Legal Insurrection. The amount of hysteria pushed to expand regulatory controls and agency funding has been astonishing. Furthermore, there seems little control over the type of research funded, and the quality of scientific papers has gone steadily downhill.
Finally, let’s not forget about all the connections between the health regulators and Big Pharma.
This is how I feel about this pause:
INJECT THIS INTO MY VEINS: Trump orders 'blackout' at CDC, FDA, NIH as health agencies prepare for MAGA bloodbath https://t.co/UIlLOxB6EH pic.twitter.com/pTwcBZUAFO
— Leslie Eastman ☥ (@Mutnodjmet) January 23, 2025
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Comments
No more money for research into gay turtles or cocaine monkeys? How will we ever survive
This article is worth reading. I got hammered when I referred people to it in comment sections of YouTube vids, but events have proven the authors right:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371369348_What_did_COVID-19_really_teach_us_about_science_evidence_and_society
No one ordered it, but there’s also a communication pause with former president Biden. It’s doubtful that anyone will ever hear from him again.
Experience has shown that “The Science” is being controlled by biased research funding. It’s time to find a better system.
How many people died because of CDC false restrictions? Useless masks, unnecessary distancing, loss of jobs if refusal to get the untested “vaccine” etc.
Maybe shut it down?
Happy to hear that the Dickey Amendment will have double-pane backstop at least for a couple weeks before the grabbers are swarming all over Congress as usual.,
Covid didn’t do much, but the reactionary shutdown was 10 times worse. Dr Long always warned us to make sure that our treatment wasn’t worse than the disease.
This is a bit long but well worth a listen. It’s from Vinay Prasad, M.D.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhxKEgGA13w
A heads up. He approves of the pause. There is some intemperate language.
Don’t know how I feel about the communications shutdown as a practicing physician in infectious diseases/critical care. In my subspecialty, I communicate with CDC a lot, particularly on pathogens acquired overseas and to request access to medications that are not available in the United States. Don’t know whether this will affect that program or not. Hard to tell. If this shutdown results in more accurate information devoid of political BS from know-nothings pushing a purely globalist agenda—and especially if it results in better outcomes for patients, then so be it.
“The “peer” review system has fallen off the end of the pier.
From https://www.socialsciencespace.com/2021/01/i-published-a-fake-paper-in-a-peer-reviewed-journal/ :
“The U.S.-China Education Review A & B, ostensibly a pair of monthly journals of education research, had dug up a conference presentation of mine about extracurricular science learning. They wanted me to send them a manuscript about that research, which they claimed they would publish a few weeks later if it met their editorial standards and passed a “rigorous” independent peer review involving at least two reviewers. Instead, I concocted seven pages of flapdoodle, including references — loosely following the plot of the TV series “Breaking Bad” — about the educational value of high school students driving into the desert and making drugs.
The paper was ridiculous. I claimed that New Mexico is part of the Galapagos Islands, that craniotomy is a legitimate means of assessing student learning, and that all my figures were made in Microsoft Paint. At one point, I lamented that our research team was unable to measure study participants’ “cloacal temperatures.” Any legitimate peer reviewer who bothered to read just the abstract would’ve tossed the paper in the garbage (or maybe called the police). That is, if they even got past the title page, which listed my coauthors as “Breaking Bad” lead characters Walter White and Jesse Pinkman.
True to their word, a few weeks after my submission, an editor let me know my article made it through peer review and was published. (It’s still online here despite my not having paid the $520 publishing fee.) I was floored.”
This is not an isolated incident.
To wit: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/feb/03/the-situation-has-become-appalling-fake-scientific-papers-push-research-credibility-to-crisis-point
https://slate.com/technology/2015/04/fake-peer-review-scientific-journals-publish-fraudulent-plagiarized-or-nonsense-papers.html
And the famous, not infamous, Sokal hoax, which is hilarious if you watch what they did and what it showed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvwjFXH9Qeg
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