'Unsettling' Accounts of HHS Leadership Fuel Calls for RFK Jr. to Resign

While public health advocates have sounded the alarm about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. since senators confirmed President Donald Trump's "profoundly unqualified" nominee to lead the US Department of Health and Human Services over a year ago, The New York Times' Sunday reporting on his job performance at HHS sparked fresh calls for his resignation.

HHS "affects the health of 340 million Americans and provides healthcare to 40% of the population through Medicare and Medicaid," explained the Times, which interviewed a dozen people who have had contact with Kennedy as secretary and other department employees. His nearly 16-month tenure has already featured a measles outbreak that killed two children in Texas last year, the recent hantavirus cases among cruise passengers, and the ongoing Ebola crisis in Africa.

As the newspaper detailed:

Mr. Kennedy has shown little interest in managing the details of work in his department, according to multiple colleagues. Instead, they say, he is single-mindedly focused on his top priorities, including food recommendations and pesticide exposures, and hunting for evidence to support his long-held beliefs that vaccines are harmful.

Deeply mistrustful of career civil officials, the secretary has surrounded himself with a close circle of handpicked advisers and stacked agencies with political appointees aligned with his views. While major posts have sat vacant and a wave of veteran health experts and scientists have departed, Mr. Kennedy has remained isolated from much of the department's top staff.

The paper highlighted the National Institutes of Health posts held by acting directors as well as the lack of a surgeon general (Trump's picks keep stalling in the GOP-controlled Senate), Food and Drug Administration commissioner (Marty Makary resigned in May, reportedly over a controversial vape policy sought by Big Tobacco), and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chief (Kennedy fired CDC's Susan Monarez in August after they clashed on vaccine policy, which led other officials to step down). Courtney Spencer, the secretary's newly appointed top spokesperson, claimed that the department is "aggressively recruiting top talent to fill every remaining vacancy."

As for Kennedy's schedule when he's in Washington, DC, "he spends much of his day in closed-door meetings, according to those who work with him, and has little direct engagement with his staff," the Times reported. Sources pointed to his history of skipping gatherings with the leaders of the department's 13 operating divisions, and some described him as "checked out."

White House spokesperson Kush Desai signaled support for the Trump appointee's performance so far, telling the Times that the department's "rapid and comprehensive response" to the Ebola outbreak proved that "under Secretary Kennedy’s leadership, HHS continues to safeguard the health and wellness of the American people."

However, Kayla Hancock, director of Protect Our Care's Public Health Project, said in a statement that "accounts from within the Trump HHS paint an unsettling picture of RFK Jr.'s absentee leadership amid public health crises both present and looming."

"Trump's health secretary hasn't stepped foot inside the CDC in nearly a year despite historic measles outbreaks inflamed by his own anti-vax propaganda," she stressed, summarizing the reporting. "When Kennedy does show up to the HHS office—typically for just six hours a day, which must be nice—he isolates himself from top staff and ignores lawmaker requests for months on end."

Hancock noted that "while Kennedy can't be bothered to involve himself in spiraling health threats like Ebola, he finds plenty of time to do a shirtless photo spread with Kid Rock, babble for hours on... his taxpayer-funded vanity podcast on topics like teen sperm, and orchestrate a wasteful department-wide fishing expedition for any data he can use to breathe life into his debunked anti-vax agenda."

"Worse, while RFK Jr. is unwilling to do his job, he's perpetuated a dangerous HHS leadership void for months, refusing to fill vital roles with actual competent, qualified people who would pick up his slack," she added. "Every day that goes by without Secretary Kennedy’s long overdue resignation is a day American lives are put further in harm's way."

The reporting builds on warnings from experts since Kennedy took over HHS. Last September, nearly every living former director or acting director of CDC jointly argued in the Times that RFK Jr. "is endangering every American's health." The following month, six previous US surgeons general collectively wrote in The Washington Post that they had a duty to alert Americans that Kennedy is a danger to public health. In February, The Lancet, one of the world's most prestigious medical journals, marked his "one year of failure" with an editorial cataloging his broken promises and "destruction that... might take generations to repair."

Journalist Seth Abramson‬ ‪responded to the Times article with a new warning: "Do not doubt that if a major pandemic hits, millions of Americans will die because of this grotesque man. *Millions*. And not a single person in America better say that we didn't know it was coming. The alarm bells have been ringing nonstop that this sick buffoon is going to kill innocent people."