The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s entire Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) office was fired as part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reorganization, a health official confirmed on April 2.
Some FOIA employees working in other HHS divisions, including the National Institutes of Health, were also among those being laid off by HHS.
The terminations are part of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s restructuring plan, aimed at streamlining operations,
The various FOIA offices did not communicate with each other, nor did they report to their parent agency, HHS, the official said. Instead, the offices “all operated in their own silo.”
The plan is to take the work the offices conducted and centralize it into one FOIA office. The plan is still being finalized.
The official said that all the FOIA requests that have been submitted will be processed.
FOIA is a federal law that enables journalists and members of the public to ask for and receive information from government agencies, including internal emails and documents. Responses regularly shed light on important topics. CDC records produced through FOIA in recent years have shown that agency officials found evidence that COVID-19 vaccines caused deaths, revealed millions of cases of post-vaccination COVID-19 early in the pandemic, and shed light on why officials changed the definition of the term vaccine.
A CDC employee told via the agency’s FOIA portal that the agency’s entire FOIA office has been placed on administrative leave.
Emails sent to CDC FOIA employees were returned with automated messages stating that they are on administrative leave and unable to respond.
Meredith Schlaifer, deputy director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of the Commissioner’s Division of Freedom of Information, told in an email that her office’s nine people are still employed, but that a number of other administration FOIA staffers were fired through a reduction-in-force, or mass termination.
Spokespersons for the Food and Drug Administration and National Institutes of Health declined to comment.
Kennedy announced on March 27 that HHS would be cutting some 10,000 workers, on top of another 10,000 that have recently been fired or left the department. Kennedy also detailed a reorganization that includes consolidating divisions and reducing the number of regional offices.
Terminations started in the first week of April.
Kennedy said on April 1 on social media platform X that the process is difficult and “our hearts go out to those who have lost their jobs,” but that Americans have been getting sicker each year despite trillions spent by the HHS.
“This overhaul is about realigning HHS with its core mission: to stop the chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again,” he wrote. “It’s a win-win for taxpayers, and for every American we serve.”
Critics say the terminations will cause harm.
“Cutting 10,000 critical public health jobs puts every American at risk—weakening our defenses against disease outbreaks, unsafe medications, and contaminated food,” Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees union, said in an emailed statement.
