is authorized todeclare a recess of the committee at any time . i now recognize myself for an opening statement. for more than two years the scientists concerned with our nation's public health agencies have been on the frontlines of our battle against the coronavirus. thanks to their efforts in leadership of president biden the worst of the pandemic appears to be behind us. before president biden took office, of public health officials had to contend with more than just a deadly virus. as americans who were dying by the thousands then president trump and his political appointees made the calculation that his reelection would be more likely if the seriousness of the pandemic were downplayed. pursuing this strategy trump administration officials criticized and interfered with the work of the scientists at our nation's public health agencies. because the science of the coronavirus showed a grave threat to theamerican people . these actions made our country sicker and did in immense damage to our public health workforce and to public trust. in our scientificinstitutions . last week, congress is independent and nonpartisan watchdogs issued a detailed report finding that government scientists observed incidents of political interference in the pandemic response to undermine the scientific integrity and independence of our nations public agencies. the government accountability office filed their report the cc and fda employees believed this quote that you see onthe screen at the moment . scientists who spoke to the d.o. said they felt that the political potential political interference they observed resulted in the alterations or suppression of scientific findings. some believed that political interference may have resulted in the politically motivated alterations of public health guidance for delayed publication of related scientific findings. career scientists across government agencies told d.o. they did not report incidents of politicalinterference . that they observed because they feared retaliation. they thought the leadership was already aware for were unsure how to report issues. gao findings confirmed that the select subcommittee has always known. that the trump administration engaged in a persistent pattern of political interference in the nations pandemic response. through our investigations the select subcommittee has documented nearly 90 instances of this dangerous conduct. when scientific reports do not align with theirpolitical message , trump administration officials tried to alter their findings . or suppress them entirely. career scientists were blocked from speaking to the american public about the risks posed by the virus and how to mitigate its spread. and they feared retaliation from political appointees simply for doing their jobs. the select subcommittee continues to find new evidence the trump administration officials obstructions of cdc efforts to provide the american people with health guidance based on sound science. new documents released today show that after the cdc drafted nonbinding guidance for simply gathering citizens senior trump officials fourth the deletion iof recommendations that they find and i quote offensive. even though they had no scientific basis on which to object. fortunately president biden has made restoring scientific integrity a priority. the biden administration is taking steps to restore the independence and integrity of our nation's public health institutions and ensure that every aspect of this response or others response to the coronavirus is based on sound science. president biden cleared an interagency scientific integrity task force under the office of science and technology which has issued key srecommendations. as noted by the gao, agencies such as the cdc plan to align scientific integrity training with key recommendations from the biden andministration . so while the biden administration has made significant progress in its first 15 months to restore scientific integrity, more work remains. here we identify steps to improve long-standing institutional policies and procedures. we must work together to ensure that any attempts at political meddling influenced by political appointees is unsuccessful. the work of scientists our public health agencies must never be corrupted to receive political benefits of the president or for any other reason. no matter who fits into the oval office and no matter what public health emergencies arise in the future, puthe work of these scientists and their ability to the american public must proceed without interference. we are joined today by representatives from the government accountability office and experts who can help us look back at the scientific integrity and sought a path to reduce the threat as we move forward. thank you and i'll now yield to the ranking member for his opening statement. >> thank you mister chairman and i also like to thank our witnesses who will be hearing from shortly and especially want to thank mister dodaro for his almost 50 years of continued service over at the gao. this hearing should be about the political interference with science that is well documented under the biden administration. unfortunately my colleagues on the other side of the aisle continue to use the s subcommittee for political purposes as a poorly failed attempt to continue tacking attacking the trump administrationwhich by the way has been out of office for almost 15 5 months . the american people have serious questions about this happening in the biden administration but the democrats on the subcommittee continued to ignore these concerns for are simply shielding their political allies from accountability. during his campaign president biden thomas repeatedly his administration would follow the science on covid. he also said he wouldquote, shut down the virus .e sadly we seen these hollow promises broken over and over again including dramatically more deaths from covid under president biden's tenure with also three proven and effective vaccines he had when he walked in the door. democrats time after time called for a national plan that would have allowed this president to punch his responsibility to the states . where are the voices on the left calling out this hypocrisy? america's house republicans spent the last year callingon the biden administration to follow the science . by issuing of reopening orders on schools, doing things like lifting mask kemandates. the biden administration continued to allow schools to be shut down and forced kids to be massed against the science. >> .. documents and testimony e contrary to the cdc's long-standing practice of keeping guidance documents confidential, senior agency officials including the cdc director herself shared secretly those draft documents of guidance with the american federation of teachers, a political union with no scientific expertise but a history of donating tens of millions of dollars to democratic campaigns. after reviewing the draft the union staff asked director wilensky to install a trigger to make it easier for union bosses to shut down schools. the cdc obliged. they went along with the union bosses request by changing and what happened, thousands of schools across the country remained closed throughout the 2020 and 2021 school year. the damage effectively locked millions of children out of their classrooms causing serious long-term academic and mental harm to millions of children and this has been well documented, the science has been clear the damage done by shutting down schools because in part the cdc throughout to the wishes of union bosses. february 18th of 2022, committee staff interviewed a career cdc scientist and medical doctor. he testified this level of coordination between the cdc and and outside organization was, quote, uncommon in fact according the cdc doesn't typically share guidance outside for any reason even with other federal partners. this was reaffirmed during a staff level briefing with of the cdc on march 2nd of 2022. this is political interference, plain and simple. the biden administration abandoned medical science and replaced it withnd political science all to get one of the largest donors unprecedented influence which ended up harming millions of young children in the process. despite theth fact we learned wy back in the summer of 2020 many schools did follow the science into safely reopened. the evidence is clear keeping schools closed armed kids. now we can see student learning loss is astronomical. in addition the impact on their social and emotional well-being is incredibly alarming as well. if the child suicide rates are surging and the surgeon general has declared a new mental health crisis. this is just one example of how president biden has failed to follow the science relatingel to covid. playing politics with the policy as the biden administration has done armed millions of american kids and seriously undermined america's trust in our public health institutions. it's interesting to note that democrat examples that we've seen regarding interference by the trump administration and things like looking to the first amendment to protect free speech in our churches that was something the administration looked at because even during a pandemic, the bill of rights iss not discarded though we've seen many in the administration try to discard the bill of rights including justmi recently two weeks ago when thee court overturned the biden administration on their illegal mask mandates on planes. you could be at a football game with 100,000 people screaming at the biden administration was still trying to force people on planes to have to wear masks. it shouldn't be mandatoryry anda that clear.e made the biden administration by the way is trying toyi reverse that. but when you look at an example i gave what the administration did to go around science involved catering the union bosses to undermine the learning ability of our children and that is well documented here on this committee over and over again talking about how much damage hasve been done academically and emotionally because of that kind of political interference by the biden administration. i hope democrats on the subcommittee will stop trying to sweep the biden administration interferences that have been documented under the rug and finally start demanding transparency and accountability and have hearings on that. with that i look forward to hearings from the witnesses and i will yield back. >> thank you, mr. scalise. i would now like to introduce the distinguished witnesses. first i welcome back the controlleren general of the unid states, no strangers to the members of the subcommittee and we appreciate your dedicated efforts to studying and improving the federal government's response to the coronavirus pandemic and the general accountability office. thank you for being with us again. available to answer members questions about the report, ms. wright is the director of science, technology assessment and analytics at the government accountability office. she led the team that conducted the recent scientific integrity review. next doctor sonia rasmussen who served at the centers for disease control and prevention for 20 years where she held various leadership positions including editor-in-chief of the flagship publication and the weekly report series. the director and the deputy director of the influenza coordination unit where she worked on pandemic preparedness issues. at the cdc she worked on several emergency responses including 2009 h1n1 sica and ebola. finally i would like to welcome anita, senior analyst for the center for scientific, science and democracy at the union of concerned scientists. she investigates the role of science in public policy focusing on topics like scientific integrity and federal agencies and political interference in aa scientific rulemaking process. will all the witnesses please raise yourur right hand. do you swear or affirm the testimony you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you god? let the record to show the witnesses answered in the affirmative. without objection your written statements will be made part of the record. you are recognized for five minutes for yourur opening statement. thank you very much mr. chairman, morning to you, ranking member scalise, members of the committee. candace and i are very pleased to be here today to talk about a recentan report on scientific integrity procedures and training at certain public health agencies. we looked at the centers for disease control food and drug administration national institutes of health and the assistant secretary for preparedness and response. the focus of the review was to look for how prepared these agencies are in order to deal with allegations of political influence in the scientific decision-making. what we found was each of the agencies to some degree had broad statements about trying to make sure they guarded a scientific integrity from suchnt political pressures. however none of them had any detailed procedures in place in order to report or address any allegations of political influence. this is problematic for a number of perspectives including the fact people didn't know how to report if they believed there was something inappropriate. people didn'tul understand how they were protected from retaliation, some protection and whistleblower legislation in congress has created so we recommended that all four agencies develop policies and procedures in order to report and address any allegations of potential political influence andnt scientific decision-makin. the agencies agree with the recommendations and actions are underway through the creation of a task force and as was mentioned by the chairman, the implementation of the new presidential directive on scientific procedures in order to address the recommendations. now similarly, we wrote that the training that was provided to the scientists and other individuals in the agencies to see if there was a clear definition of what was meant by political interference, how to report and how to discuss these issues, what kind of safeguards they would be protected by if they raised these issues and again we found significant shortcomings in all the training provided by the individuals. although nih had a little bit in their training program but it still needs to be bolstered and the assistant secretary for preparedness and response for the procedures that we found need to be improved from a policy level and training level. the agencies agreed to implement the recommendations. they are expected to produce new policies that comport with the recommendations by the summer. lastly i would say we are also continuing our work to look at how the agencies are structured and whether or not there's other recommendations we might make to the congress to make some modifications that might better safeguard from any allegations of political influence. thank you for the opportunity and candace and i will be happy to respond to questions at the appropriate time. thank you very much. >> we will now recognized you for five minutes. >> thank you chairman clyburn, ranking member scalise and members of the subcommittee for holding this hearing.hi i am a senior analyst for the center of science democracy and confirmed scientists or ucs for short. for nearly a decade i worked as a public health researcher and acted as a leading subject matter expert for science basedd and an equitable response. i'm thrilled to talk today about the need for strong scientific integrity protections across the government especially at the nations public health agencies. a scientific integrity by which independent science can fully and transparently inform policy decisions free from inappropriate political financial ideological or other undue influences. ucf has played a leading role in researching scientific integrity and its role since 2004 scientific integrity is integral to protecting the health and safety of communities across the nationon especially underserved communities into the pandemic has shown in the starkest term possible why it matters. of the pandemic was and continues to be a public health crisis of unimaginable scale and devastation. the number of people in the u.s. who've died is expected to reach 1 million. there is likely no person who is untouched by the fear, loneliness, hardships of the spirit of this virus has brought. this is especially true for black indigenous people of color, low income and rural communities throughout the u.s. for which the pandemic, they faced disproportionate harms and heartache. it's been pivotal to conducting the health and safety but the role of science and decision-making goes far beyond vaccines and lifesaving treatments. the use of the best available science is acquired by the laws and policies to protect the public from serious threats such as air pollution, toxic chemicals and climate change. science in other words played a major role safeguarding the lives of millions over generations. however they've long faced the serious problems since at least the 1950s some in government often those in the power and influence politicized federal science to serve as the political agendas. such tactics include studies, scientists in helping data collection. these attempts can have enormous trconsequences. for instance the trump trumpadministration's attempts g the pandemic to silence experts from speaking to the public and line editing or blocking the relief of scientific documents deeply eroded public trust and institutions. and the lack of scientific information coming from federal scientists opened the door to the spread of online misinformation of disinformation the effects of which we are still dealing with to this day and these are not isolated incidences. according to the research the trump administration attacks by 204 times which averages to an attack on science occurring once a week every week for four years. since 2005 we've conducted periodic surveys on scientific integrity to thousands of scientists across the government and across the past three presidential administrations. in every survey we've conducted we found a connection between workplace morale and scientific integrity. when federal scientists felt they could do their jobs and scommunicate about their work without undue political influence they were more likely to report personal job satisfaction and that the agency was effective at carrying out. the only way to prevent future and current administrations from engaging in politically motivated attempts stupid strong guardrails in place. most science-based agencies have scientific integrity policies. for instance few agencies specify that political appointees are required toca follow the scientific integrity guidelines and fewer appear willing to investigate a scientific integrity violations when a political appointee is involved. the current system is functioning it is full of holes. it's like water through a leaking hose therefore we need stronger more comprehensive measures like the scientific integrity act. this would help ensure agency decisions are informed by the best available science to protect people from the effects of thee. pandemic and other pubc health threats. the public needs and deserves a government that is willing to strengthen theo integrity policies before the public good. thank you very much. >> thank you very much. finally doctor rasmussen you are recognized for five minutes. >> thank you. good morning chairman clyburn, ranking members and members of the committee thank you for the invitation to testify on the importance of injuring the scientific integrity and the nations public health agencies. i'm doctor sonia rasmussen a pediatrician and epidemiologist. for 20 years from 1998 to 2018 i worked at the centers of disease control and prevention. during this time i served in a variety of leadership roles in birth defects, infectious diseases, pandemic planning, emergency preparedness and response and editor-in-chief of the morbidity and mortality report. i'm in often on over 270 publications and lead editor of the cdc field epidemiology manual a guide to train intelligence officers how to investigate and respond to public health events. i am honored to come before the committee. since early 2020 when we first heard reports of a novel coronavirus and closely followed the response. iha served during several cdc responses to h1n1, ebola, so i knew what my former colleagues were facing. working on the response to a public health emergency is challenging. the situation is rapidly evolving and decisions need to be based on limited data. people are sick and dying in thesituation is highly visible. americans want answers now on how to protect themselves and their loved ones from the public health threat. developing interim guidance is a difficult process to weigh the benefits of the intervention againstt, the potential risks often while the information which you are basing those decisions is constantly changing. with a new pathogen like the virus that causes covid-19 guidance development is difficult. many questions are coming out. how was the pathogen transmitted, is it aerosol or droplets, how important is transmission from surfaces can infected persons transmit the virus before they show symptoms just to name a few. you need to consider logistical beissues for example if you recommend people wear a mask are there enough available or are they needed for frontline health workers who can mitigate the impact of the pandemic. feasibility is a critical consideration thuss you obtain input from keybt stakeholders wo are implementing the guidance you are developing and then you need to communicate that guidance and emphasize that ite will change as additional information becomes available. fortunately i knew the cdc expertise,had the knowledge and experience to guide these public health decisions and are dedicated to an maintaining integrity throughout the process. as former editor-in-chief i was also closely following and there is a focus on timely authoritative accurate objective scientific reports to guide public health action. a well respected publication highly cited has broad readership in the public health and medical community. mmwr served a critical role providing up-to-date information during previous health crises for example in 1981 cases of what later became known as aids were reported which prompted reporting of additional cases. one of the most difficult situations for me to hear about the pandemic has been reports of political interference with the development of covid-19 guidelineslo and demands to revw and make changes to articles. these threaten the credibility of essential sources of information to guide us through the pandemic. watching cdc and institution that is highly revered around the world and to attract dedicated my life's work lose the trust of so many americans was painful and to watch the lack of trust lead to more deaths from covid-19 has been a tragedy. we know we will be challenged by future public health threats weather and other emerging attack or radiation emergency it is essential that safeguards be put in place to protect the integrity of public health agencies so that the american people know theyn can trust the guidance coming from them. to maintain that trust these agencies need to be free of political influence. the ability to protect the health of americans during future public health threats depends on it. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much ms. rasmussen. we will now go into five minutes of questions for each member. before i ask my question, i want to respond to the ranking member. i'm going to reserve until he gets s back. >> i'm here mr. chairman. >> thank you. i want to respond to something you said in your statement before we get to the questions i want to do it with you present and give you an opportunity to respond. you mentioned the biden administration's interference as it relates to school safety protocols when we were trying to get schools reopened. i consider a this an attempt to distract from what we are trying to get to in terms of interfering with the work of our scientists so we had multiple cdc officials come before this committee and made it very clear to us it is not in proper for cdc to engage with stakeholders. it s is totally something different from trying to discredit the work ofcr scientis in fact if you recall doctor robert redfield, director of the cdc under president trump told us, and i'm quoting him here, it wasn't unusual for the cdc when they were developing guidance to reach out for discussion purposes two groups that may be affected by the guidance. that's what cdc did,." that's different from trying to discredit the work of scientists. >> can i respond to that? >> we had a hearing on this and in fact i brought this up to the cdc director herself and when i mentioned this in my opening statement, this is somebody we interviewed and he said it was unprecedented to give that kind of access weeks in advance of a report coming out to then make line by line edits and this is what i pointed out it wasn't just that she was sharing it with people as the process was going on. it's that she allowed an outside group, political union to make wholesale changes to a scientific document before it came out and didn't afford other people that opportunity and at that hearing i specifically asked doctor wilensky for names of other organization. i said are there any parent organizations affording the same access the unions have and she implied there were not. i said give me examples and to this day i haven't gotten a single example back to the question and she said in this hearing while under oath that she would send specific examples and said there were some but she's yet to send me a single one. the only one we know of is the union and it was very well documented they got vip access that wasn't afforded to other people in other settings for cdc guidance. that's what i brought up to doctor wilensky herself even when she said there were other examples, she's yet toto provide me a single one and that hearing was weeks ago. >> i appreciate that and i don't want to be argumentative here but i do not wish to leave any attempts t to discredit the efforts of authoritiesor to enge with those people who are going to be affected by the decisions that they made -- >> this was one-sided only one group was given that opportunity and others were not. again even inn the example from the majority regarding the trump administration there were accusations against the trump administration but accusations can be made against president trump's administration without but i've seen as documented examples. i've d given documented examples and we even had a hearing where the director herself acknowledged it happened and someone elset at the cdc said t was unprecedented for that to happen so there isn't unanimity and this is why the science matters but scientists like putting on a lab coat don't go above the law because not all scientists agree even in the cdc wedc had a disagreement said tht hearing so let's get the facts out there. i documented my example and stand by and still wait for a response from doctor wilensky. she said before all of us on the committee she would give more examples and she's yet to give me one. >> i can appreciate that but as you may remember we have some hearings here, this committee did regarding the meatpacking industry, the meatpacking industry and i assure you that we are aware that the previous administration engaged with and allowed the meatpacking industry to review their work. this is not unprecedented and i gladly give this to you after the meeting if you don't remember it. i do. >> this will continue and we will wait for more information from cdc as well. >> very good. i yield myself five minutes for questions. i'm kind of troubled about the findings that cdc and fda scientists, and i'm quoting them here, felt the potential political interference they observed resulted in alteration or suppression of scientific findings including relating to the coronavirus. what led gao to make these findings? >> you are muted. please unmute yourself. >> i'm sorry, mr. chairman. our 31st report wasn't really intended, and one of the objectives wasn't to document individual examples of political interference in scientific decision-making. what we focused on is what some of the institutional processes were that needed too be addresd to deal with accusations that might come during any administration but while we were doing that, some of the people we talked to identify these concerns they had and when we asked them why they didn't report, they didn't know how to where they feared retaliation and that's how we got the documentation, the result of the recommendations was to have better procedures in place for reporting and addressing this issue. can you elaborate, please? >> certainly. with regards to that issue, employees told us as we were conducting interviews they handed these concerns, so the information was provided and included to be able to set up where there are gaps in the system and areas to strengthen to be able to report and address any concerns of political interference. that information was included to show that there are gaps and things the agency can do to strengthen the policies with the goal of achieving their desired effort to making a cultural and scientific integrity. s >> i was wanting to expand on that a little bit but if that's all you care to say about it that's fine. how would you characterize the trump administration's record on integrity and independence? >> thank you for the question, chairman clyburn. the trump administration, we have been watchdog gang the administrations since 2005 on integrity violations and during the administration we noticed a spike in comparison to prior administrations. one aspect was scientific integrity violations occur at all administrations at least since the 1950s and probably before then but we documented 204 attacks on science by the trump administration, 29 of which were related to covid-19 directly. these impacts had enormous consequences. this would include a culture within the agency, a lack of scientific information being shared with the public, inability to communicate during crisis situations like covid, inability to use science to protect people's health and safety.ct thank you for the question. >> i'm going to open with another question. let me yield to the ranking member five minutes for questions. >> thank you, mr. chairman. as we talked about earlier, we did have a hearing in the committee regarding among other things interference that was documented by the biden administration where the cdc was getting ready to come out with guidance for reopening schools. weeks in advance they shared it with the head of the largest teachers union in the country. there were back-and-forth e-mails we uncovered where the director was asking what they thought of it. t the union expressed concern because they said it doesn't give them enough power to close down schools and they gave of changesggestions within the final guidance almost word for word the union's changes were included in scientific guidance sonc it woud be easier to shut down schools and as i mentioned to the chair man when i asked the director, she acknowledged it happened and iha said were there any other groups afforded the opportunity she said there were. i asked her to send me the specific names and i have yet to receive a single one so i would ask as you are talking about concerns of political interference when we have that well-documented example of guidance and thens, a union that wants an ability to shut schools downo says we would like you to d make those changes and they ae made verbatim, have you seen examples like that in other cases and would you consider that example of political interference in science? >> we've not looked at this particular example you are mentioning and i will ask candace if there's other examples we have run across on a comparable basis but i would say before i turned to her the concern i've had is that there is not a process in place to thoroughly address these issues. it should be reported, screamed, investigated, responded to and these are allegations that can be made by the congress as well as by people within the agencies and i think that is a significant shortcoming regardless of what type of allegation. can you help in responding here? >> certainly. so on this particular issue, we haven't identifieded other instances of involvement. in other discussions we had with former agency heads, we have heard that sometimes there is a practice to engage with s stakeholders. it's really not fair to us when the procedures that are in place, what requirements are in place in terms of who is consulted for input. >> i'm going to come back to this because i think this is an important point in this broad issue of what is political interference in the science. the first assumption is that the science is all unanimous. have seen in many examples, scientists themselves don't agree on a lot of these questions even in the cdc examples, doctor wolinsky says she does this all the time. scientists within the cdc have very big disagreements even on how outside influences are even allowed. so that question i think is important, but then as we get to -- we've had a lot of debate over scientists comingov into saying we should be opening up schools. many scientists have said that so the idea that there's a consensus among science i think is something we have to be careful about because in many cases we find that there is wide disagreement among scientists if one scientist doesn't get their way they say there is political interference and when it's not political interference may be they are wrong. there was a recent example of the week and a half ago a federal court ruled mandate that planes have to require people to wear a mask. it was thrown out by a federal judge and quickly that same day almost every major airline dropped the mask mandate. biden is now appealing that but in response, doctor fauci said, quote, we are concerned about the courts giving into things that are unequivocally a public health decision. this is a cdc issue. it shouldn't have been a court issue. i'm not sure if he realizes there are three branches of government and the courts are one. do you believe any agency according the cdc is above the law if the law also something differently than an agency if anybody wants to answer that. >> ian think that the courts should have a role in the system of government and that it's an issue people can pursue. whether or not congress has the prerogative to change the law. the system of government should be allowed to work as intended with the proper checks and balances. >> i see i'm out of time and yield back. >> i think the ranking member for yielding back and recognize ms. maloney for five minutes. >> thank you for holdingan this important hearing. more than two years ago the oversight committee held one of the first hearings with doctor fauci and other health officials regarding the trump administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic and since that first hearing, the subcommittee's investigations have found that the appointees retaliated against public health officialsns for sharing accurate information about the coronavirus with the public for instance multiple officialsmu confirmed that the trump white house blocked cdc from conducting any public briefings for more than three months during thefi early months of the pandemic because president trump rewas angry about truthful information that had been shared. this morning the subcommittee released new evidence that the former cdc director robert redfield called the decision one of the greatest disappointments. what kind of damage does it because when scientists are blocked from speaking out during a crisis? >> thank you for the question, congresswoman. the example that you gave here about the cdc being unable to speak toe the public during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 is one that we have been deeply concerned about ourselves. i emphasized in my written testimony there was a lead author of a report that we released in may of 2020 to look specifically at whether the cdc was holding press briefings compared to previous epidemics. i'm troubled by the revelation in the report that the career scientists did not report incidents of political interference to any agency or any external officials because they thought the leadership was already aware. so mr. dodaro what did they find. one of the reasons as they were unsure who to report to in the cases. one of the things we look back over the ten year period there wasn't one formal complaint found during that period of time and that spanned. it wasn't part of the institutional norms to help people identify how to report so if you don't know how to report and are concerned about retaliation, these things will not get to surface in a systematic way that they could be dealt with thoroughly. any other thoughts on this? >> certainly. thank you. i would also add on to this part of the reason scientists didn't report as they feared retaliation. however we've called for to implement procedures and as part of the procedure that they would also include protections for cdc and nih employees to highlight the protections that might be in place or afforded to them if they were to report. the other piece i would like to touch on is with regards to leadership being aware is in some cases employees thought leadership was aware and didn't think they needed to report it but there's also instances they were not sure if they did report it with the leadership was aware they were taking action. >> did your report find that a public health agency had adequate anti-retaliation policies in place to protect scientists? >> i will ask candace to clarify, but i don't think we focused on that particular issue but we felt there were not procedures in place but needed to be put in place including protections of people against retaliation. clearly the employee as we talkeded to were not aware of anything and we didn't find anything in the training. >> can you expand on what the respondents from cdc told you or told gao about why they feared retaliation? why did they fear retaliation? was anyone threatening them or why did they fear retaliation? >> would you respond please? >> the employees didn't elaborate specifically by they feared retaliation. i think some of it has to do with media reports that they were seeing in other instances and that affected their thinking on that issue. >> my time is expired. we have to learn from this dark chapter to take steps that this never happens again and that our scientists are protected and speaking truthfully about what they know. i yelled back. thank you. >> the chair recognizes mr. jordan for five minutes. >> thank you mr. chairman. how many scientific integrity violations did you say you found during the trump administration? >> 204. >> how many were relative to covid? >> 29. >> have you found any integrity violations in the biden administration? >> the biden administration is still ongoing but yes we have found at least one. >> and how many on covid? >> none related to covid. >> so when doctor wolinsky said the vaccinated can get the virus that wasn't it's like scientific integrity violation? it's false.dr >> thank you, congressman. so, my organization has a specific definition for how we define an attack on science. you can see more in my written testimony on that. >> a statement that is absolutely 100% positively falls she said the vaccinated couldn't get the virus into said they couldn't transmit the virus. we know both of those statements are false and you haven't found those as a scientific integrity violation? >> again we can get back to in writingin to discuss this more. >> you said in your opening statement misinformation could be public institution. did they erode trust in the cdc when thehe head of the cdc said that the vaccinated cannot get the virus? >> again i can't speak on the specific issue -- >> it's a simple question when a pretty important public institution when we are talking about covid and you pointed out the trump administration supposedly did a scientific integrity violations with the head of the cdc says something that's absolutely false yet simple question does that erode the trust in public institutions? >> again we can get back to you in writing to discuss the reports. >> did it erode the trust and public institutions and would it be a scientific integrity violation when the head of the cdc allowed the teachers union to edit the guidance on schools reopening which is exactly what doctor wolinsky did, would that be scientific integrity violation? >> that is an investigation that i can't comment on the specific details. but we do agree that the process of investigating the violations is important. there needs to be investigations to examine the evidence. >> that's not what doctor fauci said that this virus didn't start in a lab. is that a concern? it sure looks like it did. all the evidence points there. is that something you're going to investigate? >> we can discuss more in writing. >> what about when you said it wasn't getting the research, are you going to investigate that because it sure looks like it was. >> again i can't specifically talk on this. >> did he say american tax dollars were not used at the institute when in fact we know they were. was that a scientific integrity violation? the highest paid in our government, the head of, when he said that was that a scientificn integrity violation that you should be looking into? >> again i can't speak on specifics that you're raising but i can bring it up inar a written testimony to you responding. i'm here to talk about how the scientific integrity -- >> when they said they were not going to impose a vaccine mandate and the white house response coordinator said that's not an authority we are exploring at all and then just a few months later they actually did that, did that erode the trust in the public institution when they set on three different occasions they say that they wouldn't impose the mandate and then they turned around and did, does that erode the trust in the public institutions? >> again, some of these issues were never in the policy realm and policy can use nonscientific information to guide the processes. scientific integrity isor more specific on the process of researching. >> when the head of the cdc says that the vaccinated cannot get the virus is that something that we should look into? >> again i can't comment on the cdc procedures in depth. >> i think it's important we understand the inconsistencies here. the scientific integrity violation and the trump administration get you haven't looked at anything relative to the biden administration where they saidmi things that were absolutely, positively 100% false andfa when they lead an outside political organization edit the school reopening guidance they let them edit that, that has to be eroding the trust in public institutions and i'm using the words from your testimony. i'm out of time so i will yelled back. >> thank you for yielding back. the chair recognizes mr. velasquez for five minutes. >> thank you for holding this important hearing. mr. dodaro, i'm going to give ample opportunity to respond to my questions without interrupting. the new report says that to maintain public trust and credibility, agencies must ensure the decisions are, and i quote, evidence-based and free from political interference. how well the gao recommendations help shed light to achieve that goal? >> first of all, if they follow the recommendations the institutional protections to be able to respond thoroughly at any allegation that comes up because they should have a process of how it gets reported. it gets investigated, they respond to the allegation in writing and then discuss anything if necessary that needs to be done so right now we don't have a process so there's a lot of anecdotal information but there's not a systematic evaluation of the allegations so it should enhance public trust. thank you. will the recommendations made implemented help protect against any future a administration attempt toto discourage the sharing of information in an open and transparentar manner? >> i don't think it would necessarily be a panacea to ensure any future administration for other parties but what it will ensure is nothing that is alleged goes uninvestigated and is dealt with properly. i think it could also have a salutary benefit by hiring employees to feel more protected in raising this issue so thereby the affect to help people not move in this direction to try to interfere in the process knowing that there is a well-established process for investigating such matters and the employees are trained to recognize this. so i think it will help a great debate. >> during your time at the cdc, you helped the agency respond to other outbreaks and both republicans and democratic administration so can you please explain whyy public trust and te information it publishes during a public health emergency is so important? >> i think the cdc has been and should be seen as experts on public health emergency is. people have spent their lives learning to protect the american people from emerging infections and other threats and so i think it's important people at the cdc have the ability to speak to the american people and present the results and talk about what's known, what's unknown. we learned as we go along. this is what we know, this is what k we don't know and what we are trying to find out. >> thank you. sorry if i'm mispronouncing. the trump administration undermining of science and experts led many of the scientists [inaudible] what has it taken to rebuild to ensure that there are qualified experts in these positions? >> thank you for the question, congresswoman. there really is a time to whether scientists feel comfortable working in the agency and political interference steps to undermine the process. when scientists feel like they don't know who to go to when they see a violation they don't know who to talk to, they don't know what procedures or whether the enforcement if they are finding a correct violation corn whether it will actually go through this will lead to two why am i here, my work isn't meaningful, and a decrease in the ability to do work to help all of us across the nation. >> thank you, thank you for that answer. mr. chairman, i will yield back. story. >> thank you for yielding back. the chair now recognizes doctor green for five minutes. >> thank you chairman clyburn and ranking member scully's and i want to thank the witnesses for being here today. today is another missed opportunity for us to investigate issues that deserve the attention of the subcommittee and one of the critical failures of the federal government's pandemic response int my view was the outside focused as a primary answer while therapeutics took a backseat. the tests and vaccines were crucial tools but effective therapeutics are indispensable for saving the lives of covid patients. the fda and cdc sidelined their expert advisory committees for booster shots prompting to senior vaccine officials to leave the agency in protest altering the bidenen administration i might add. athe the same time they showed little urgency in authorizing drugs and had well-documented efficacy in mitigating. along those lines, where was the priority for investigating treatments such as combination therapy? congressman foster and i wrote a letter demanding that this be addressed. a bipartisan letter i might add. is there any bias that led to the senior leaders to emphasize vaccines and downplay the therapeutics?? these are serious questions we should be investigating so we can improve the preparedness for future pandemics. the biden administration's mixed messages demonstrate that behind their follow the science slogan, the true guiding light is political. the administration believes thel public health requires forcing everyone to wear a mask on well ventilated planes though not in stadiums packed with thousands of fans screaming at the top of their lungs. but the same officials have determined that lifting title 42 of the border is not a public health risk. that makes no sense. it's hypocrisy. it's not a science. the science applies differently depending what radical progressives really are. public health requires public trust and unfortunately the cdc and other public health agencies have seriously damaged thed credibilitypu during this pandec by avoiding transparency and acting in accordance while pretending to justify the actions with science. in early 2021 the cdc outsourced to the administration's guidance with the federation of teachers also known as the union that endorsed joe biden and the democratic primary and donated millions of dollars to the candidates in the 2020 election cycle. the teachers unions had more than 40 million to the democrats in the 2020 election. in fact according to the open secrets, democrats made up 99% of the donations. no single action has done more to undermine the trust to be in the integrity of the cdc they and the decision to place the political interest of the administration over the interests ofes millions of children. the white house and the cdc out loud the afd to edit and rewrite the guidance line by line. the guidance was presented with a full weight of the cdc's credibility behind it. not once a disclosing that the language was written in a partisan political entity with no scientific experience and clearly a financial donor. the cdc never disclosed the involvement. in medicine we have well-established professional guidelines around the proper sources and the disclosure of conflicts of interests yet such get suchstandards of integrity e completely tossed aside when they allowed an outside political player favored by the biden administration to rewrite the guidance. the problem is the significant parts or not guidance at all they are teacher union guidance to keep schools closed and they chose not to disclose any of this. why does it matter? this was thanks to the efforts of union bosses that the cdc they made it more likely schools would close. at the same time the cdc was collaborating with the left-wing political group to keep schools closed he had abundant evidence of severe harm school closures inflict upon our children and the need to reopen. the cdc knew the students were falling behind academically. they knew there was a mental health crisis spiraling out of control among our youth. the cdc knew all this put butthousands of schools remained closed for months because the political allies were placed above the well-being of our students. if we want to investigate partisan political corruption and federal agencies, why don't we start there. thank you mr. chairman. >> thank you, gentlemen for yielding back. the chair recognizes mr. foster for five minutes. >> thank you mr. chairman. first ii would like to thank doctor rasmussen for the excellent description of the challenges of providing real-time guidance in times of uncertainty. and to the gao for their emphasis on the need for the consistent process in the resolving of the trade-offs and to adhere to this process. i think one of the difficulties we are having is the difficulty of separating the scientific process from the resolution of policy trade-offs. for example in the trade-offs involved in school the scientific part of this is to quantify as best you can under certain conditions how many people will die and on theti otr hand the performance of our children will suffer. then the political part, the appropriately political part is to make the policy decisions that balance the trade-offs recognizing some groups will be heard by the policy decisions and all stakeholders should justifiably be consulted of that. once the political decisions on those policy trade-offs have there is a huge incentive on the part of any policymaker to distort the scientific influence or to interfere with the ongoing process including the retaliations to justify the political policy decisions but one of the glaring examples of this was the emergency approval of hydroxychloroquine and absent any real scientific evidence of its effectiveness. not only did the previous administration put undue pressure on scientific professionals but championed hydroxychloroquine and other drugs after there was strong evidence that they were not effective going against the recommendations and the data and the results presented by scientists. the report details a senior official claimed that the trump administration retaliated against him for disclosing concerns about inappropriate political interference to make hydroxychloroquine available to the public in may of 2020 absent of any evidence for it. and this is in reference to the former director a whistleblower complaint after it was pushed out of his position by the trump administration. what did the gao recommended that the public health agencies do to protect government scientists from retaliation such as was faced? >> we recommended a number of things. one was that there be a proper institutional approved process for how to report these concerns, how they will be investigated and how there would be an official response. so it would give the employees in this case a place to go to basically raise the allegations and having it thoroughly investigated and dealt with and they should or part of our recommendation would bef to explain what procedures there would be for protecting the confidentiality for any retaliatory efforts made against the employee who made the allegation. that has to be there. secondarily, that there would be training t so people understand what the process is, but the protections are that they have, who to report to and how it will be treated. these are very similar to how allegations are treated with whistleblower situations throughout the government but they are absent here and i think that it is a key deficiency. the recommendations have implemented should remedy it. the administration's promotion of hydroxychloroquine would likely compromise the health of thousands of people in the middle of the most deadly pandemic experience in our lifetimes? so he is sitting here today canr you say a little bit about how harmful the previous administration's attempts for this unproven treatment has coronavirus against the advice of its own scientists what the harm was? >> yes, thank you for the question. the public depends on federal agencies to promote good science. people wonder where do i go, what treatment do i take. they need answers to these questions. itit was very difficult when you have political officials stating don't listen to our federal sciences, don't listen to the expert opinions and instead listen to something else that is unproven. it forces the public to be confused about what to do. it promotes misinformation in so manyny different ways and it undermines the ability of scientists to feel that their work will help in the pandemic into their situations. >> thank you. my time is expired and i will yield back. >> thank you for yielding back the time. the chair recognizes you for five minutes. >> i would like to thank the witnesses for taking the time to testify before the committee today. in the report that is filed with us today i found it interesting that you used an example or cite an example of what you think or with a union of scientists think is political interference through agencies and you cite out of the whistleblower can complaint that hhs officials put workers without any proper infectious disease training or safety equipment. do you recall at the time when they declared a pandemic? >> i don't know the exact date. >> the exact answer is march 11th so i find it interesting that there will be a whistleblower complaint and it's probably why it didn't go anywhere that at the time the who was denying that there was human to human transmission of covid-19 and many of us, as a former director of public health thought the pandemic should have already been called didn't even consider it a pandemic or epidemic until march 11th. i would like to take a moment to make sure we have clarified specifically what your report does and does not lay out. to conduct your work how many individuals the gao interview? >> i would ask ms. wright to respond to that, please. >> we had a methodology so we spoke to 16 employees either managers or staff and conducted semi structured interviews with them and that's how we got information about what if any observations they had with regards to the violations. in addition to that we had several other interviews where we spoke with former agency heads and also current agency officials and various offices across those agencies. >> you might want to explain the confidential hotline that we had as well. >> thank you for that. i should mention with regards to the managers and employees we spoke with we did provide them confidentiality assurances that information they shared with us would be appropriately protected and so with regards to the example that we have in the report, it is at a high level because of the specificity about those observations could risk disclosing their identity. >> thank you. so does the report make any specific findings regarding whether the complaints did or did not constitute political interference? >> no that wasn't aen part of te objective so no. >> so what i'm hearing is you didn't find for certain that there was political erinterference. what you found is that absent the specific procedures may explain why the agencies didn't have formally reported internal allegations? >> that is correct. >> thank you for clarifying that. i think we can all agree, and i left this position is a former director of health of that political interference of any kind shouldn't be tolerated. that's why i wish we could hold a hearing on political interference we saw during this administration were the cdc went directly to the teachers union. we should also be discussing the administration's choice to create confusion and bypass the cdc and fda long-established vaccine process for boosters. the gao foundbo that from 2010 o 2021 none of the agencies within hhs, cdc, fda, nih had a report of political interference. do you recall anyone at the cdc if they felt and were so concerned about political interference thatif they resign? >> i don't recall that, candace, do you. >> i'm not aware of anything like that. >> the administration announced in availability for both vaccine boosters for all adults before the cdc and fda finished reviewing the data to determine if this was necessary and in fact in contrast to the political interference in the president brought up to officials left the agency amid reports of political interference saying they were concerned about politics interfering and i have a report i would ask for unanimous consent to be submitted through the committee. >> without objection. >> i will submit that to you. thank you so much and i will yield back my time. >> thank you for yielding back the time. the chair now recognizes mr. raskin for five minutes. >> mr. chair man, thank you for calling this crucial hearing. the great astrophysicist neil degrasse he tyson said the great thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in and and we have recently seen attacks on scientific truths by corporations that find it financially inconvenient or government actors who find the truths politically inconvenient. in the opioid crisis we saw a powerful corporation use its cwealth and power to influence governmenten to ignore real scientific realities and that exposed people to terrible addiction and suffering and death and in the covid-19 crisis, we saw administration officials and the trump administration systematically deny the reality. we saw them have medical cures like hydroxychloroquine into systematically undermining the ability of scientists to do their work. we documented 88 separate instances of political interference in the response by trump officials including attempts to suppress or change scientific reports based on research implementing public healthth policies without any basis at all and penalizing scientists for sharing accurate science with the public. the e-mails released today show the trump white house officials wanted to tell the cdc that its ability to publish its scientific guidance to the communities was contingent on the cdc removing public health recommendations that the white house found offensive. now doctor rasmussen, in your 20 year career at the cdc, have you ever witnessed political officials instructing the scientists before to change science-based public health guidance because certain officials found the findings and guidance offensive? >> i never saw that in my time. i want you to talk about the strangeness ofou that and tell s how that does collide with of te work that scientists do. as i try to give some background of how hard it is to make the recommendations you are basing your science on changing data the cdc scientists take those recommendations very seriously and so coming to some recommendations and then having them alter, having political interference i can only imagine must have been really -- >> after the incident, doctor butler he was a senior official wrote to his colleagues about the community guidance saying, and i quote and thank you for putting this on the screen, this isn't good public health. there are people who will get sick and perhaps a diet because of what we were forced to do. our team has done the good work only to have it compromised. and i heard in that an echo of what doctor burks has been saying. his own appointee need to be the coordinator for his administration and has been saying because of political decisions that were made, interfering with the scientific efforts and the ability to maintain the scientific and social cohesion we need to effectively address the public healthth crisis hundreds of thousands of people died or were injured because of that political interference with science. so doctor dodaro, i would like to ask you according to the gao report, there were multiple science officials at the cdc and fda who believed the political interference may have resulted in the alteration of public health guidance is that right? >> that's what the report says, that'sat correct. okay. and the lead investigator can you elaborate on what the investigations found with respect to interference with scientific evidence during the pandemic? >> we did hear from a few with whom we collected information of what they thought was that potential interference and that may have resulted in an alteration of guidance. i am not able to provide any more specifics on the type of items or publications because again, doing so might compromise the confidentiality of assurances we provided individuals. but i can say is a number of these individuals for whom we did see there was concern about the effect of morale within the agencies. there were also concerns around the sort of hectic environment in which they were working and how that might then contribute to a lack of understanding and clarity about what the procedures are so some off those are the basis for why we made the recommendations we did as well as the opportunities. >> the time is expired. >> thank you mr. chairman. >> the chair now recognizes for five minutes. >> thank you mr. chair and all of you for appearing today. i guess my first question to mrr your five decades ofth service. half a century of service to the country. question is what are the lingering affects of the political interference that happened with these health agencies? >> i think there's concerns about the public trust that could be placed in these institutions. one of the things we did earlier this year as i've been concerned about this for a while is we identify leadership and coordination as a high risk area because we had concerns that we were not really prepared to deal with public health emergencies in the future because they were unclear roles and responsibilities. there's been problems with clear and consistent communications with the public. there hasn't been a lot of good data collection. there's deficiencies in transparency and accountability. so i'm very concerned about this and that's what we go to this selectis group of high risk ares that we keep across the government. i think the lingering effects are i'm not sure it's better pprepared now than we were at e beginning. >> let me jump in because i have limited time. can you point to one specific thing that we need to do in congress would otherwise to prevent this going forward? >> i think there needs to be a good plan that gets developed that identifies the response that we pointed out in this area. ri recommended a 2015, for example, that there be a national a aviation security pl. that's still not developed and in place. so i have a lot of recommendations w i would be hay to share with of the committee. >> let me jump in. i'm sorry i just have to reclaim my time here. the gao conducted the review based on the report after the biden administration came into office, is that right? >> the report covers what happened after the pandemic. >> why didn't this begin during the trump administration? >> trump administration? >> we did begin it then. it began in october, 2020 as i recall and concluded in the biden administration. >> have you conducted a review of the gao with regards to any officials at the gao feeling any pressure from the trump administration with regards to its own activities during the pandemic? >> i'm not aware of any examples of that that have occurred. >> the political interference that happened with regards to these agencies perhaps happened with a number of agencies including institutions like the gao. >> we are in a legislative branch of government. the president can't remove me. i report through the congress and i have a 15 year term i can only be impeached by the congress, so we have very good safeguards to prevent us from being subject to political interference so it's a totally different situation in the executiveot branch agency. >> i think the issue though is i wish t that we had heard about this during the trump years when there would have been more public pressure on the trump administration to stop what it was doing. i'm not saying that youve were actively interfered with but i think that there's a pressure to almost be silent about some of these things and i think that had we have this information earlier we could have perhaps hialtered the way this political interference happened in the trump years so i would urge you toe please call the balls and strikes at any time regardless of who's in office or whether there's any pressure. thank you for that and i will yield back. >> thank you all for your participation here today. i understand that the ranking member has opted not to make a closing statement so i will refrain from part of what i wanted to close with today and go straight to my prepared closing statement but before i close i would like to enter into the record a letter the committee has received from the center for justice and the new york universityin school of law. withes respect to the importance of entering scientific integrity at the public health agencies i ask unanimous consent that this letter be entered into the official t hearing record and without objections, so ordered. in closing i want to thank the witnesses for testifying before the subcommittee today. we appreciate your insight, your expertise and advice for how to safeguard the t scientific independence and integrity of our public health institutions. today's hearing has revisited a darkas chapter in the history of the nation's public health agencies and to the incredible burdens in the pandemic scientists had to contend with an administration that continually undermined the scientificic independence, integrity and decision-making. the accountability office in a nonpartisan and independent review has affected the scientists and have revealed the same interference. i applaud the efforts to restore scientific integrity and independence. the administration has placed his trust in the country's best doctors, scientists and public health experts and they've guided us out of the confusion we faced early in the pandemic allowing us to move safely forward. we must never again allow politics to interfere with processes ofpu public health. i think the witnesses for testifying today and i look forward to working closely with you to safeguard the scientific integrity in the nation's public health interests. with that and without objection, all members will have five days with which to submit additional written questions for the witnesses through the chair which will be forwarded for their response. this hearing is adjourned. .. house subcommittee this is about an hour and 40 minutes. >> morning. this hearing will now come to order. this is a virtual hearing we must address it in housekeeping matters. new participants --mute participants microphones while eliminating background noise. members are responsible for muting and on reaching themselves. if you notice you are recognized or unrecognized and you have not unmute yourself, i will send you a request to unmute yourself. please accept the request. reminder that the five-minute clock still applies. if there is a technology issue, we will move to the