Durbin Calls On The Trump Administration To Immediately End Suppression Of The CDC's Morbidity And Mortality Weekly Report
Durbin releases new report that highlights the health harms from federal freeze of the MMWR, a critical scientific update which has been released by the CDC every week since 1961 until now
WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) released a staff report that examines the impact of the Trump Administration’s federal communications freeze on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). The report reveals new findings about information that has been stifled by the cessation of the MMWR, including timely bird flu updates, and provides important assessments from public health leaders about the consequences of the Trump Administration’s freeze.
Since January 13, 1961, CDC has—without fail—published weekly issues of the MMWR, the agency’s routine update to doctors, health departments, researchers, and the public about infectious disease outbreaks, emerging health findings, and urgent new health care updates. Information from the MMWR provides timely research and analyses of public health threats, including the latest reports from the CDC’s disease detectives. For decades, the weekly report published every Thursday, and provided unbiased, science-based information to identify critical new information for the health care community.
On the report’s release, Durbin released the following statement:
“Viruses do not take a break because the President slaps a gag order on our public health agencies. Outbreaks are not contained because scientists are ordered to stop talking about them. Doctors, health care providers, and the public all benefit from the release of critical and timely health information. Without it, we will see preventable suffering and death,” said Durbin. “The Trump Administration must immediately resume the timely, objective, and scientific publication of the CDC’s MMWR reports, without any political meddling, by releasing the next MMWR issue tomorrow.”
Key findings and takeaways from Durbin’s report include:
- Critical quotes and testimonials from public health practitioners in local communities who were co-authors on two separate studies that had been slated to be published in the January 23, 2025, issue of the MMWR before it was blocked;
- Analyses from former CDC officials, leading epidemiologists, and disease prevention experts about the impact of the MMWR moratorium, including impacts for the historic ongoing tuberculosis outbreak underway in Kansas, the avian influenza, and fentanyl crisis.
Halting the publication of MMWRs has occurred in tandem with an unprecedented purge of public health data from the CDC’s website, which occurred within the last week and removed extensive collections of datasets used by researchers and public health officials to address vaccinations, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, tuberculosis, suicide, tobacco use, violence, and other health threats. The tampering of this data was ostensibly to comply with President Trump’s Executive Order to remove mentions of gender, accessibility, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. These actions could have profound consequences for public health interventions.
On February 4, 2025, a federal lawsuit was filed by a group of physicians seeking to restore the websites and data removed from the CDC’s website, among other sources, arguing that the purge creates a “dangerous gap” in information available to track diseases and diagnose their patients.
For a PDF copy of Durbin’s report, click here.
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