Don't Let RFK Jr. Silence the Public on Matters of Public Health
Health and Human Services (HHS)
Say "NO!" to RFK Jr. Limiting Democratic Free Speech at the HHS.
One of RFK Jr.'s first acts as HHS secretary went almost entirely unnoticed
The People having a direct voice in the regulatory process is critical for maintaining a Democracy.
The federal government is enormous, so it might go unnoticed when changes happen at that level...
This is why we have public comment: to give time to notify the public of federal regulatory actions. It's the "policy-making process for Executive and Independent Agencies of the federal government."
This process has been in place for all of our lives, but most people never notice it...
However, people noticed when the ACIP, VRBPAC, and Flu advisory meetings were postponed...
Why the delay?
It happened because public comment is required by law; the meetings can't happen without it.
In a way, public comment for federal actions is all that stands between us and a fascist state because the government is required to announce their actions BEFORE they happen. Otherwise, they could just change the rules on the fly and make anything anyway because there was no public regulatory process.
This process makes up the entire foundation for how the federal government interacts with the public.
All of the above committees are part of HHS, which is part of the Executive Branch, and is why RFK Jr's role is defined as "Secretary." This gives him a lot of control of quite a lot, but not everything.
Many statutes protect public comment in the federal government, the first of which goes back to the Administrative Procedures Act of 1946 (APA), which created public comment. That bill was described as "an Act to improve the administration of justice by prescribing fair administrative procedure."
But there were exemptions, or waivers, for certain groups, and though a permanent policy was never adopted, in 1971 those exempted groups were forced to do public comment informally by former HHS Secretary Elliot Richardson... it was a waiver of a waiver, which I'm sure there is a better way to phrase.
This was called the "Richardson Waiver." See? It's not me. "They" called it a waiver of a waiver.
One of the first things that RFK Jr. did was to remove the Richardson Waiver and put those exemptions back in place so that now public comment is NOT required "for matters relating to agency management or personnel or to public property, loans, grants, benefits, or contracts."
RFK Jr. was sworn in as Secretary on February 13th, 2025.
The Draft on this action was prepared on February 28th, 2025.
And it was published in the Federal Registar on March 3rd, 2025.
It's pretty clear that this is a high priority for RFK Jr., and he has expressed interest in removing the public's voice in matters of HHS regulations entirely.
This would include both VRBPAC (FDA) and ACIP (CDC). I should point out that we were only able to get Novavax available for wider use, essentially saving the company and putting our future vaccines on an excellent trajectory, because of this process that allowed direct public engagement.
Currently, this is only limiting public comment in a few groups, but we have to make sure that it not only stops here but that we also get the Richardson Waiver re-implemented, which RFK Jr. has the power to do alone. There are currently approximately 1,000 committees that the public can give comments on, and many are not governed by the HHS.
The agency said, "the (HHS) Department will continue to follow notice and comment rule making procedures in all instances in which it is required to do so by the statutory text of the Administrative Procedure Act."
However, at the same time, part of the exemptions in the APA includes being able to disregard the public comment process in certain instances. Part of the Richardson waiver includes greater restrictions on instances where public comment was allowed to be bypassed.
They have expressly removed that restriction, and that will create limitations to further engagement from the public in rule-making for federal agencies governed by the HHS. I hope you can appreciate how backward this all is because they have worded it in a manner that is in reverse of its intention.
And it gets worse because our problems are a lot greater than just the FDA and CDC.
Canceling further comment requires an act of Congress, and we need to make sure it never gets there.
Call the HHS and demand they re-implement the Richardson Waiver and not take any action that will limit public comment.
The public comment process creates the timeline for meetings and actions, this means meetings are delayed by 30-45 days simply to allow the public to comment. Without the timeline created by public comment, Republicans could disassemble our public health infrastructure without anyone noticing.
We've received our information about what our government is doing before it does it via the public comment process since 1946. It makes sense that Republicans would put this process under attack, too
Removing public comment would allow Republicans to dismantle even more parts of our government, but if they do it this way, it won't be questionable... it will be official, and yet, still the wrong action.
FDA: 1-800-835-4709
CDC: 1-800-232-4636
Folks have asked me if we should call Congress too... and no, not yet.
Make sure you sign the petition to participate in later actions.
If you would like to read more from legal entities on the matter...
https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/hhs-rescinds-richardson-waiver-and-5967508/
Petition by
To:
Health and Human Services (HHS)
From:
[Your Name]
We, the public, demand that public comment not be removed as part of the regulatory process. Though stopping public comment completely requires an act of Congress, we want to be clear that the public maintains an interest in this process right now.
We are aware that the new Secretary of the HHS, RFK Jr., has shown interest in stopping both future regulatory meetings and the public engagement associated with it.
This is unacceptable, and a full stop must be made to any action that limits the public's involvement.
The HHS and RFK Jr. must reimplement the Richardson Waiver and not limit the public's engagement in any way.