from the mutiny dept
Well, the RFK Jr. congressional hearing is now over. And, to the shock of very few thinking persons, it was a complete and total shitshow. I’m sure I will be writing something up on the hearing soon, but the short version is that Congress members on both sides of the aisle went in fairly directly and hard on Kennedy, who attempted to play word games and/or lie in response, when he wasn’t delving into industry-based conspiracy theories.
Preceeding the hearing, however, was a letter signed by over a thousand staffers at HHS, sent both directly to RFK Jr. and to Congress, which demanded his resignation as Secretary of HHS.
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.
“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.”
Now, as he was in the congressional hearing, Kennedy is mostly a one-trick pony when it comes to anyone criticizing his policies on medicine, health, or really anything else. If you disagree with him, you’re paid off by whatever industry he claims to be attacking. Think he’s an anti-vaxx nutbar? You’re paid off by big pharma. Don’t think chemtrails are a thing? You’re part of the conspiracy to control Americans’ thoughts. Sign a letter with a bunch of HHS colleagues asking him to resign because he’s a conspiracy-mongering travesty of an HHS Secretary?
Well, that’s just because these people are all completely broken, you see.
In a statement Wednesday, HHS Communications Director Andrew Nixon told CNN, “Secretary 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,” Nixon continued. “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.”
Kennedy is in a leadership position. He can do very little without the team that rolls up to him. And that very team is in complete disagreement with Kennedy’s self-assessment of how amazing he is.
Kennedy is now being pressured from within his own agencies, from Congress, from health-focused NGOs, and from several other places too. I know Donald Trump doesn’t like to admit a single mistake… but is Kennedy really worth all of this trouble?
