The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) does not respond to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
Posted by All In with Chris Hayes, Checked
- Sources
- 1 contradict1 support1 context
- Said
- 1 time·
- Confidence
- 82%
All In with Chris HayesSep 19, 2026
The claim that HHS does not respond to FOIA requests is contradicted by HHS's own FY2026 Chief FOIA Officer Report, which reports FY2025 request volumes and a backlog share, meaning requests are received and processed.
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What was said
… And so I've been banned from those events. But it's not just the children's health defense. Things also, you know, I have called HHS. I have written HHS. I have we try to get information from HHS. When you send a FOIA to HHS, it goes into a a vacuum, goes into a wasteland. Nobody responds. You don't hear anything back. Like they are not. And what's a joke is that you see so much from Kennedy saying This is the most transparent HHS of all time, and it's just absolutely not. It's a secret black box where all data is denied. …
All In with Chris Hayes · · from the transcriptPost →What we found
Contradicts. HHS's 2026 Chief FOIA Officer Report states that backlogged requests made up 33% of the total requests HHS received in FY 2025, which implies that most requests were processed rather than ignored.[2]
Contradicts. HHS's 2026 Chief FOIA Officer Report sets measurable FY 2026 actions, including reducing the overall FOIA backlog by at least 5%, showing an active processing program rather than a non-responsive one.[2]
Supports. The Code of Federal Regulations establishes the rules HHS follows in handling FOIA requests, including how much time it should take to make a release determination, which describes a functioning response process.[3]
Context. The Reuters piece cites Justice Department data on record FOIA volumes (nearly 1.2 million requests in FY2023) and low full-grant rates government-wide, but the figure is garbled and does not address HHS specifically, so it does not support the claim.[1]
Context. The speaker's claim that requests go into a 'vacuum' reflects a complaint about responsiveness or delay, and the sources do not show an absence of responses; the extracted absolute wording 'does not respond' overstates the passage.[2][3]
Sources
3 sources: 1 fact-checker, 2 primary
- 1In the US, information gets less freereuters.com · fact-checker · cited for: context
- 22026 Chief FOIA Officer Report - Section 5 - HHS.govhhs.gov · primary source · cited for: contradicts, context
- 3Code of Federal Regulationsnih.gov · primary source · cited for: supports, context
Where this claim was made
Said in 1 published post