HHS employees sign letter calling RFK Jr. to resign

More than 1,000 current and former Health and Human Services employees signed a letter demanding the resignation of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The letter, published Wednesday and addressed to Kennedy as well as members of Congress, said his leadership was endangering Americans’ health.

The signatories’ grievances include the recent firing of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez, who refused to fire several staff members or to change vaccine policies. The letter also blamed Kennedy for the resignations of several other top CDC officials who left immediately after Monarez’s ouster.

The letter writers also accused Kennedy of appointing political ideologues who the writers accused of manipulating data to fit their conclusions. As an example, they said he chose Retsef Levi, who previously opposed mRNA vaccines, to lead a working group on COVID-19 immunization. The letter also expressed concern over Kennedy’s recent involvement in rescinding emergency use authorizations for COVID-19 vaccines and narrowing their approved uses. He didn’t provide data or methods to justify the decision, the letter said.

How did the government respond to the letter? The CDC was broken, and fixing it would require a period of reform and more staffing changes, HHS Communications Director Andrew Nixon told WORLD. Kennedy was committed to evidence-based science, Nixon said.

Kennedy is scheduled to testify before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday morning about the president’s healthcare agenda for next year.

Dig deeper: Read my story on President Donald Trump’s push for COVID-19 drugmakers to publish their data on vaccines.