The Los Angeles Post

Trump staff obstructed CDC guidance, panel says

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The Trump administration regularly interfered with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) process for developing and issuing guidance about the coronavirus, changed scientific reports and undermined top public health officials, a congressional panel said Monday.

 

The House select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis said interviews, emails and other documents obtained by the panel showed how political appointees in the Trump administration took control of CDC’s public communications and overruled scientists in an effort to bend the agency to Trump’s rosy outlook on the pandemic.

 

The panel concluded political interference has caused lasting harm to CDC staff morale, as well as a loss of credibility in the nation’s public health institutions.

  • Former CDC Director Robert Redfield and other top agency staff described to the committee how the White House required CDC guidance to be reviewed by officials at the Office of Management and Budget, who ultimately had veto power over the content even though many had no background in infectious diseases.
  • Redfield told committee staff that agency guidance was “compromised” at times, and that the process of getting approval from non-CDC officials gave him “PTSD.”

No masks: In one instance, Martin Cetron, director of the CDC’s division of global migration and quarantine, described how the Trump administration blocked a mask requirement for public and commercial transportation in the summer of 2020.

 

“The evidence was scientifically there” to support a mask requirement, Cetron said, but “despite what seemed like a fairly broad consensus, ultimately that decision was made and we were told that there would be no such use of federal authority for masking in a transportation corridor.”

 

Title 42: Cetron also said the order on Title 42 “was not drafted by me or my team,” but was “handed to us.” He indicated Stephen Miller, one of former President Trump’s immigration advisors, was one of the people behind the policy.

  • Both Trump and Biden administrations have argued Title 42 is a public health order meant to curb the spread of COVID-19.
  • But Cetron’s testimony gives more evidence it was a tool to limit immigration