After promising transparency, RFK guts public records teams at HHS

After promising transparency, RFK guts public records teams at HHS toggle caption Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images 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. Some 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.

A few people have been left standing on other FOIA teams within these agencies, for now. Sponsor Message 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 and current professor at the College of Information at the University of Maryland. The layoffs of FOIA staff will "exponentially" increase backlogs and delays for health-related public records requests, he predicts.

"They are the American people's records, and there should be adequate FOIA staff to make sure that record requests are answered promptly," he says. "Firing your staff is antithetical to openness and transparency." In response to a request for comment, HHS emailed NPR the following: "The FOIA offices throughout the Department were previously siloed, and did not communicate with one another.

Under Secretary Kennedy's...

Sydney Lupkin.