Mass firings at the FDA have decimated divisions tasked with releasing public records generated by the agency\u2019s regulatory activities in sectors including tobacco, food, medical devices, and veterinary medicine.<\/p>\n
But as the dust settled on the layoff melee, a notable exception emerged among the agency\u2019s staff charged with responding to Freedom of Information Act requests. The cuts spared at least some workers who furnish documents in response to court orders in FOIA lawsuits involving the FDA division that regulates vaccines, which includes litigation brought by an ally of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s who represents anti-vaccine interests, according to four current or former agency employees.<\/p>\n
KFF Health News agreed not to name the workers because they are not authorized to speak to the press and fear retaliation.<\/p>\n
Lawyer Aaron Siri filed the FOIA lawsuits, on behalf of the nonprofit Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency, in 2021 and 2022 against the FDA to obtain records related to Pfizer\u2019s and Moderna\u2019s covid-19 vaccines. Siri was Kennedy\u2019s lawyer during his 2024 presidential campaign<\/a> and has represented prominent anti-vaccine activists in numerous lawsuits.<\/p>\n The FDA has released millions of pages of documents about the vaccines after a federal judge in Texas ruled against the agency and set deadlines for furnishing the records. The judge, Mark Pittman of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, wrote in January<\/a> that the nonprofit\u2019s request seeking materials about Pfizer\u2019s covid vaccine is \u201carguably the most important FOIA request in American history.\u201d<\/p>\n In a Jan. 3 court filing<\/a>, Department of Justice lawyers said the lawsuit\u2019s plaintiffs had received roughly 4.5 million pages of covid vaccine records and the agency still had at least 1.2 million pages to process in one of the cases. The agency hired about a dozen workers in 2023 and 2024 to help process the records, in addition to one part-time and nine full-time contractors at a cost of $3.5 million. Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency has been posting documents<\/a> on its website.<\/p>\n The FDA faces a June 30 court-ordered deadline to finish releasing documents. Staff members who work on FOIA litigation in the FDA\u2019s vaccine division \u201care pretty much exclusively working on Siri litigation,\u201d one worker said.<\/p>\n HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon declined to answer specific questions from KFF Health News about layoffs of FDA FOIA workers. The questions sought responses to accounts of firings provided by current and former employees.<\/p>\n \u201cThese claims are untrue and unfounded,\u201d Nixon said.<\/p>\n \u201cFDA FOIA staff, including those working on litigation involving CBER, were impacted as part of HHS\u2019 reorganization,\u201d Nixon said, using the acronym for the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, the FDA division that regulates vaccines. He declined to elaborate.<\/p>\n \u201cThe simple fact is that FOIA offices throughout the Department were previously siloed and did not communicate with one another, which is inefficient and not effective. Under Secretary Kennedy\u2019s vision for a more efficient HHS, these offices will be streamlined into one place and the work will continue to increase radical transparency for the American people,\u201d Nixon said in an emailed statement.<\/p>\n Three workers bristled at Nixon\u2019s characterization of the cuts. \u201cThere\u2019s plenty of ways they could be impacted without being fired,\u201d one of them said.<\/p>\n Siri did not respond to requests for comment for this article.<\/p>\n Details of the fallout of the firings on FDA\u2019s FOIA operations, which have largely ground to a halt, are\u00a0based on interviews with half a dozen current or former employees.<\/p>\n The move to keep FDA staff working to furnish government records related to its approval of covid vaccines came amid a purge of FOIA workers<\/a> across federal health agencies, including the FDA, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. HHS laid off the entire CDC office handling that agency\u2019s FOIA requests and significantly cut staff at the NIH and FDA, according to eight current or former federal workers. Overall, as part of its plans to shrink the department by 20,000 people, HHS officials said 10,000 employees<\/a> would be laid off, 3,500 of them from the FDA.<\/p>\n Nikhel Sus, deputy chief counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a legal advocacy group, said, \u201cIt\u2019s very concerning that an agency would be prioritizing requests for political reasons.\u201d For years, Kennedy has peddled falsehoods about vaccines \u2014 including that \u201cno vaccine<\/a>\u201d is \u201csafe and effective,\u201d and that \u201cthere are other studies out there<\/a>\u201d showing a connection between vaccines and autism, a link that has repeatedly been debunked<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is not what FOIA is meant to do,\u201d Sus said. CREW this month sued the CDC<\/a> for firing its entire FOIA office.<\/p>\n The layoffs gutted the workforce that process FOIA requests across FDA centers overseeing vaccines, drugs, tobacco, medical devices, and food, current and former employees said. During the 2024 fiscal year \u2014 October 2023 through September 2024 \u2014 the FDA provided at least some records in response to more than 12,000 requests, according to HHS\u2019 annual FOIA report<\/a>.<\/p>\n The firings have been inconsistent across offices. Within the FDA division that regulates vaccines, public records staffers who proactively release certain documents, such as information about approved products, were fired, three of the workers said. But in the FDA\u2019s drug division, they were not, two workers said.<\/p>\n At least some who handle FOIA litigation in the FDA offices regulating vaccines and drugs kept their jobs, according to four workers.<\/p>\n By contrast, FDA workers who handled FOIA litigation in other FDA offices, including those that focus on tobacco and medical devices, were fired as part of the mass layoffs, according to one former and two current employees. The former employee said they had been working on litigation in which a court order required documents to be produced monthly, among other FOIA responsibilities.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause we were cut, those things stopped abruptly,\u201d the former employee said. \u201cThere was no plan in place to take care of the work.\u201d<\/p>\n FOIA is a transparency law signed in 1966 that guarantees public access to the inner workings of federal agencies by requiring officials to disclose\u00a0government documents. It has been used by researchers, companies, law firms, advocates, and journalists to review public records and the work of agencies, hold officials accountable, and uncover harm, corruption, and political meddling in policymaking.<\/p>\n Health care experts and transparency advocates have said that HHS\u2019 mass firing of FOIA staff across agencies<\/a> will hamper public access to government records that document the handling of illnesses, faulty products, and safety lapses at health facilities, putting the health and safety of Americans at risk.<\/p>\n At the height of the covid pandemic, in late 2020, the FDA granted emergency use authorization of Pfizer\u2019s and Moderna\u2019s covid vaccines, before granting full approvals in 2021 and 2022, respectively. Covid vaccines are credited with saving millions of lives<\/a> in the U.S., but Kennedy has rejected the science behind them and questioned their safety.<\/p>\n While speaking to Louisiana lawmakers in 2021, he falsely claimed<\/a> that the covid vaccine was \u201cthe deadliest vaccine ever made.\u201d During one of his Senate confirmation hearings<\/a> in January, he said, \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d when Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) pressed him about whether covid vaccines were good. \u201cWe don\u2019t have the science to make that determination,\u201d Kennedy said.<\/p>\n In a June 2021 post<\/a> on the social platform X, Kennedy publicized a petition<\/a> to the FDA to remove covid vaccines\u2019 emergency use authorizations that was submitted by Children\u2019s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine nonprofit he founded and chaired until December.<\/p>\n Pittman, the federal judge in Texas considering the two Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency cases against the FDA, was appointed in 2019 by President Donald Trump. Pittman ordered the FDA to release records related to approval of Pfizer\u2019s and Moderna\u2019s covid-19 vaccines on an accelerated schedule.<\/p>\n Siri for years has fought vaccination requirements, including challenging a Massachusetts flu shot mandate<\/a> and a covid vaccine mandate in public schools in San Diego<\/a>. His clients have included the Informed Consent Action Network, a prominent anti-vaccine group founded in 2016 by activist Del Bigtree. Bigtree worked as communications director<\/a> for Kennedy\u2019s presidential campaign and is a major player in Kennedy\u2019s \u201cMake America Healthy Again\u201d movement.<\/p>\n \u00a0Like Kennedy, Siri has spread misinformation about vaccines and questioned their safety. During a 2023 legislative hearing<\/a> in South Carolina, Siri said, \u201cThere are actually a number of studies that do show correlation between autism and vaccines,\u201d even though claims of such a link have been repeatedly<\/a> debunked<\/a>. During one of his Senate confirmation hearings, Kennedy refused to say<\/a> vaccines do not cause\u00a0autism.<\/p>\n \u201cWe must be able to raise valid questions about vaccines without fear that anyone who deviates from the accepted orthodoxy will be smeared as a radical. There are many issues that divide Americans, but drug and vaccine safety should unite us,\u201d Siri wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece<\/a> following a story in The New York Times<\/a> that he had petitioned the FDA on behalf of ICAN to revoke approval of the polio vaccine.<\/p>\n And in early January, Siri responded<\/a> to a CDC social media post by saying: \u201cCDC\u2019s message for the new year is get a C19 vaccine. Their worship of vaccines as the path to safety and health is a cult.\u201d<\/p>\n We\u2019d like to speak with current and former personnel from the Department of Health and Human Services or its component agencies who believe the public should understand the impact of what\u2019s happening within the federal health bureaucracy. Please message KFF Health News on Signal at (415) 519-8778 or get in touch here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n KFF Health News<\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF\u2014an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF<\/a>.<\/p>\nUSE OUR CONTENT<\/h3>\n