More than 1,000 current and former employees of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) signed a letter demanding that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. resign.
“We swore an oath to support and defend the United States Constitution and to serve the American people. Our oath requires us to speak out when the Constitution is violated and the American people are put at risk,” the letter says. “Thus, we warn the President, Congress, and the Public that Secretary Kennedy’s actions are compromising the health of this nation, and we demand Secretary Kennedy’s resignation.”
“Should he decline to resign, we call upon the President and U.S. Congress to appoint a new Secretary of Health and Human Services, one whose qualifications and experience ensure that health policy is informed by independent and unbiased peer-reviewed science,” it adds. “We expect those in leadership to act when the health of Americans is at stake.”
According to the letter’s signatories, Kennedy has “endangered” Americans by removing former CDC Director Susan Monarez, calling for other CDC officials to resign, appointing “political ideologues” to panels, rescinding the FDA’s emergency use authorizations for the COVID-19 vaccines, and engaging in “verbal attacks” against HHS workers.
HHS Communications Director Andrew Nixon told The Hill that Kennedy “has been clear” that the CDC has been “broken” for years.
“Restoring it as the world’s most trusted guardian of public health will take sustained reform and more personnel changes. From his first day in office, he pledged to check his assumptions at the door—and he asked every HHS colleague to do the same,” Nixon said. “That commitment to evidence-based science is why, in just seven months, he and the HHS team have accomplished more than any health secretary in history in the fight to end the chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.”
