More than 1,000 current and former employees of the US Department of Health and Human Services wrote a letter to Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday, arguing that his leadership has “put the health of all Americans at risk” and demanding his resignation.
The letter, which was also addressed to members of Congress, comes after a tumultuous week at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that saw its newly confirmed director, Dr. Susan Monarez, declared to be fired by the Trump administration, spurring the resignations of four other senior officials at the public health agency. Monarez was ousted after refusing to bend to pressure from top HHS officials to sign off on potential new vaccine restrictions, according to people familiar with the matter.
“Secretary Kennedy continues to endanger the nation’s health,” the employees wrote in Wednesday’s letter, citing actions including the facilitation of Monarez’s firing, the resignations of key, longtime CDC leaders, the appointment of what they called “political ideologues” to influential roles in vaccine policy, and the rescinding of emergency use authorizations for Covid-19 vaccines without, they said, “providing the data or methods used to reach such a decision.”
HHS didn’t immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.
Hundreds of current and former HHS staffers also wrote to Kennedy last month, after the August 8 shooting at CDC headquarters that killed a police officer, imploring the secretary to stop “spreading inaccurate health information” and to guarantee the safety of HHS’s workforce.
In response, an HHS spokesperson said in a statement from the department that Kennedy “is standing firmly with CDC employees” and that “any attempt to conflate widely supported public health reforms with the violence of a suicidal mass shooter is an attempt to politicize a tragedy.”
In an opinion piece published Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal, Kennedy claimed that his agency is “restoring public trust in the CDC,” which he said failed during the Covid-19 pandemic because of “politicized science, bureaucratic inertia and mission creep.” He pledged to return the agency to a main focus on infectious disease and claimed his replacement of experts on the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a move that shook public health experts, is a step toward eliminating “conflicts of interest and bureaucratic complacency.”
The current and former HHS employees who called for his resignation this week, some of whom signed the letter anonymously for fear of retaliation, emphasized that they signed in their own personal capacity. In the previous letter, staffers had asked for a response from Kennedy by September 2; they said Wednesday that he hadn’t responded personally.
“Should he decline to resign,” the employees wrote, “we call upon the president and US 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.”
Kennedy has faced increasing pressure from some in Congress as well as public health groups; last week, after Monarez’s ouster, US Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington and senior member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, called for the White House to fire him.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, called for Kennedy’s resignation in an opinion piece published Saturday in the New York Times, citing his “longstanding crusade against vaccines and his advocacy of conspiracy theories that have been rejected repeatedly by scientific experts.”
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat from Connecticut and member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, was the latest lawmaker to call for Kennedy to be fired, at a budget hearing Tuesday.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Republican doctor from Louisiana who chairs the HELP Committee, said in a post on social media last week that the “high profile departures” from the CDC “will require oversight by the HELP committee.” He then called for the September 18 scheduled meeting of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to be postponed indefinitely.
“Serious allegations have been made about the meeting agenda, membership, and lack of scientific process being followed,” Cassidy said in a statement. “These decisions directly impact children’s health and the meeting should not occur until significant oversight has been conducted. If the meeting proceeds, any recommendations made should be rejected as lacking legitimacy given the seriousness of the allegations and the current turmoil in CDC leadership.”
Separately, Kennedy is scheduled to testify before the Senate Committee on Finance on Thursday morning in a hearing titled “the president’s 2026 health care agenda.”
CNN’s Adam Cancryn and Sarah Owermohle contributed to this report.
