"The censorship begins," said one public health expert as the Trump administration directed federal health agencies to suspend all external communications, like those that have updated people across the U.S. in recent weeks amid outbreaks of Covid-19, influenza, and norovirus.

The Washington Postreported Tuesday evening that administration officials delivered the directive to staff members at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The agencies operate under the Health and Human Services Department (HHS), which President Donald Trump has nominated vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead. Kennedy has signaled that if confirmed he would purge the ranks of the FDA and change federal vaccine guidelines, including potentially limiting or eliminating the CDC's program that provides free immunizations to uninsured and underinsured children.

The pause on external communications will be in place for an indeterminate amount of time, according to the Post, and applies to the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) compiled by the CDC. The epidemiological record includes "timely, reliable, authoritative, accurate, objective, and useful public health information and recommendations" for healthcare professionals and the public.

During the last year of Trump's first term, as the coronavirus pandemic spread across the country, HHS officials denounced the MMWR as "hit pieces on the administration" and pushed to delay and prevent the CDC from releasing new information about the pandemic that didn't align with the White House's views.

While changes to the operations and communications of federal health agencies after a new administration enters the White House are "not unprecedented," said epidemiologist Ali Khan, the MMWR "should never go dark."

The health agencies were instructed to halt communications about public health as the news media reported on a so-called "quad-demic" of four viruses that have been circulating for several weeks across the country.

CDC data shows that the spread of influenza A, Covid-19, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is "high" or "very high," and norovirus cases have been rising in recent weeks.

The country is also facing an "ongoing multi-state outbreak" of the H5N1 avian flu among dairy cattle, with 67 total human cases also reported during the current outbreak.

The CDC had been scheduled to publish three MMWR updates this week on H5N1 when the new directive was announced.

The Post reported that it was unclear whether the ban on external communications would apply to reports of new avian flu cases or foodborne illness outbreaks.

Journalist Jeff Jarvis said Trump's new policy will give way to "forced ignorance on health data" and called on officials "in sane and scientific states" to continue reporting public health information on their own.

The suspension of external communications will apply to website updates and social media posts, advisories that the CDC sends to clinicians about public health incidents, and data releases from the National Center for Health Statistics, according to the Post.

"Asking health agencies to pause all external communications is NOT typical protocol for administration changes," said Lucky Tran, director of science communication at Columbia University. "Generally website updates, disease case counts, and other typical day-to-day work continues."

Tran noted that during his first term, Trump officials halted external communications for the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department.

"In their second term," he said, "they appear to be targeting health agencies too."

What the Hell Is Going on at NIH?
Scientists sound the alarm about Trump’s unprecedented “Big Brother” research crackdown.

Chrystal Starbird, a cancer researcher at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, had been preparing to serve on her first National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant review panel at the end of January. On Wednesday, to her surprise, that meeting was abruptly canceled.

These NIH panels, or “study sections,” typically involve a group of about 20 to 30 scientists who meet to assess research grant proposals within their areas of expertise. Most of the grants, Starbird says, range from about $2 million to $10 million. Once the group reviews and scores the projects, a separate NIH “advisory council” decides which ones to fund.

The email Starbird received was vague. It came from her study section contact at NIH, within the Trump administration, and it said the multiday meeting, set for January 30 and 31, would not take place as planned. The message instructed her to save her files about the projects for the time being and thanked her for her service to the NIH. “I’ve never seen a complete pause like this as part of a transition,” she told me.

The “pause” goes beyond grant reviews. It appears to be part of a larger blackout on research at NIH and across the federal government. On Tuesday, as the Washington Post first reported, the Trump administration paused all external communications—”health advisories, weekly scientific reports, updates to websites and social media posts” at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which includes the NIH, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

HHS also reportedly instructed staff to pause any travel plans, including to conferences and workshops. (The department hasn’t publicly commented on the freeze, and didn’t respond to a request for comment from Mother Jones.) Employees also received a memo instructing them to report any colleagues who’ve used “coded or imprecise language” to “disguise” diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts—or face “adverse consequences.”

“It sounds like Big Brother,” one NIH researcher told me.

The disruptions to the grant process, some researchers say, is already affecting science. The NIH is the country’s largest public biomedical research funder, providing some $40 billion to outside scientists every year to pursue the type of basic research that over the decades has contributed to countless important discoveries, and the development of lifesaving drugs and treatments. To ensure the agency supports the most rigorous, promising studies, it relies on panelists like Starbird to review them. But now those meetings, which typically take months to schedule, can’t happen.

On top of that, according to reporting by Science and email memos reviewed by Mother Jones, upcoming advisory council meetings where studies are officially greenlit were suspended too. That puts new funding for all sorts of research, from cancer to the opioid crisis, on hold until further notice. “It just feels like everything is in limbo,” says Amanda Gillespie, a professor and speech-language pathologist at the Emory School of Medicine whose 5-year, approximately $2.5 million funding proposal was up for approval at an abruptly canceled council meeting that had been set for this week. She’d scored high marks from her reviewers, so was optimistic about getting selected. “It was, to put it mildly, quite a letdown.” Without knowing when the meetings will start up again, she says, “it’s really frustrating because it’s very hard to plan.”

If the pause is lifted, returning to the normal process will likely take months, experts say. “It’s quite an endeavor to organize this thing,” says Esther Choo, a professor of emergency medicine who studies policy and substance abuse at Oregon Health and Science University. Her study section on addressing the opioid crisis, was also scheduled for this week and then canceled. These meetings, she explains, typically last one to two full days and can require 40 to 60 hours of preparation. They often involve top researchers in a given field.