Hundreds of current and former workers for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have signed a letter asking its leader, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to resign.
Organizers of the letter say the number of signees totals more than 1,000 people, although some requested anonymity for fear of retaliation.
The move, they said, follows Kennedy’s failure to respond to an earlier letter in August — initially signed by more than 700 HHS workers which now numbers nearly 7,000. In that letter, the workers pleaded with Kennedy to protect them and to stop spreading misinformation about vaccines and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“The silence is deafening,” they said in a statement posted with the letter and released Wednesday.
Wednesday’s letter lists several ways the signers say Kennedy is dangerous, both to them and to public health. It says he has:
- Facilitated the firing of the Senate-confirmed CDC director, Dr. Susan Monarez.
- Caused the resignations of four top CDC leaders.
- Appointed “political ideologues who pose as scientific experts and manipulate data to fit predetermined conclusions.”
- Disregarded a Trump executive order calling for restoring “Gold Standard Science in America.”
- Rescinded the FDA emergency use of authorizations for COVID-19 vaccines without explanation.
- Disparaged the recommendation of COVID-19 vaccine for children.
- Disregarded the HHS workforce with ongoing verbal attacks.
Many CDC staffers remain traumatized following the Aug. 8 shooting that saw hundreds of rounds fired at agency buildings and a police officer lose his life. Some have spoken publicly to say the violence is a natural consequence of the Trump administration’s — and Kennedy’s — villainization of CDC staff and the work done there.
Kennedy has called the CDC a “cesspool of corruption.”
Last week, four top leaders at the CDC resigned en masse over issues including vaccine policy and termination of the director. Now, the administration’s new leaders have ordered staff to return to the office starting Sept. 15.
This week, some of those leaders testified at the Georgia Capitol to a packed room filled mostly with current and former CDC employees and supporters. They spoke of their deep concern for the future of health and science under current federal policies, and said they could no longer do their jobs inside. They stopped short of focusing on Kennedy, though.
A significant report from Kennedy’s hand-picked team is due out this month to report on the causes of autism. The study’s leader, David Geier, has been fined for practicing medicine without a license.
The letter also says Kennedy has refused to be briefed by HHS scientists, and caused the firings and resignations of CDC top leaders last week.
Asked for comment, an HHS spokesperson said Kennedy “has been clear: the CDC has been broken for a long time.”
“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. 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.”
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