There’s one point that has come up, sometimes explicitly but more often by what isn’t said, in my many conversations with civil servants at HHS and especially at the core medical research agencies within it. At the simplest level, they’re not lawyers. But the issue requires a little more explanation because obviously most people aren’t lawyers in the other departments and agencies either. Outside the Department of Justice, none of these agencies are legal agencies or departments per se. But in most of the rest of the government lawyers are ubiquitous and much of the work culture is structured around the work and ideas of lawyers. This is probably intuitively clear for most of you who’ve either reported on the federal government or worked within it. But it’s worth stating explicitly and thinking about the impact this has had in recent weeks.
Again and again in conversations with people at NIH, NCI and other public health or research agencies within the government the same basic point comes up: the people immediately affected by the events of the last four weeks have very little idea what the relevant law is, the legal standing of the actions being taken or who to talk to about any of it. I’ve had a few sources ask if I could organize some lawyers to create what amounted to a FAQ about the relevant law. I haven’t had a chance. But someone should.
