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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.”
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.”
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/03/health/hhs-employees-letter-rfk-jr

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.”
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.”
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/03/health/hhs-employees-letter-rfk-jr
