More than 1,000 current and former Health and Human Services employees penned an open letter Wednesday calling for HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to either resign or be fired.
The letter — whose signatories were not publicly named — was released at a tense time for the health agency. Last week, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez was fired, and several other top CDC officials resigned from their jobs in protest. Staff are also reeling from layoffs, changes to the vaccine approval system — led by Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic — and a shooting outside the CDC headquarters last month.
Wednesday’s letter accused Kennedy of “endangering the nation’s health.” It cited last week’s upheaval at the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration’s decision to rescind emergency approvals that made the COVID-19 vaccines available for young children, and the elevation of “political ideologues who pose as scientific experts” to key vaccine approval posts.
It called for Kennedy to resign, and said that if he declines to leave his post voluntarily, President Trump should pick a new HHS secretary.
“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 read.
The letter was released by a group called Save HHS, which penned a similar open letter last month urging Kennedy to “stop spreading inaccurate health information.”
The group said the signatories for Wednesday’s letter were provided to members of Congress, but weren’t publicly listed due to security and privacy concerns.
HHS Communications Director Andrew Nixon responded to the letter by defending Kennedy’s record and arguing he is working to restore trust in a “broken” CDC.
“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.”
Separately, nine former CDC directors wrote a New York Times op-ed on Monday that castigated Kennedy for making decisions they said were “unlike anything we had ever seen at the agency,” and argued Monarez’s firing “adds considerable fuel to this raging fire.”
Kennedy is set to testify before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday morning, where he’s likely to face questions about the tumult at HHS.
Last week, the White House confirmed that Monarez was fired. Her lawyers called the firing “legally deficient” and said she was “targeted” because she “refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated public health experts.”
At least four other senior CDC leaders also stepped down last week, in some cases penning resignation letters that decried cuts to the CDC, accused the Trump administration of an “ongoing weaponizing of public health” and blasted “misinformation” about vaccines.
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a physician who chairs the Senate health committee, said the resignations will “require oversight.” He also sits on the Senate Finance Committee.
Meanwhile, Kennedy ousted every member of a CDC panel responsible for making vaccine recommendations earlier this year, in some cases replacing them with people who have questioned the safety of vaccines.
And last week, the FDA only authorized a set of updated COVID-19 vaccines for younger adults and children with preexisting health conditions, in addition to all seniors.
Sara Cook
contributed to this report.
Joe Walsh is a senior editor for digital politics at CBS News. Joe previously covered breaking news for Forbes and local news in Boston.
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