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More than 1,000 current and former employees of the Dept. of Health and Human Services have signed a letter demanding that HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. resign, and if he refuses, then he should be fired. The letter called for him to be replaced by a competent professional. The letter noted that everyone signed for themselves, not as representatives of some organization.
The letter cites the removal of CDC Director Susan Monarez and the resignations of four top CDC leaders in response to her firing. One of the points made was: "We believe health policy should be based in strong, evidence-based principles rather than partisan politics. But under Secretary Kennedy's leadership, HHS policies are placing the health of all Americans at risk, regardless of their politics."
The controversy over Kennedy, and especially over vaccines, has put Donald Trump into a bit of a bind. He has aligned himself closely with Kennedy and with the anti-vaxxers in his base. But if Kennedy goes off the rails banning vaccines or making them expensive or hard to get, there are going to be some high-profile deaths that could have been prevented and Trump will get the blame for not canning Kennedy. Also, aligning himself with the anti-vaxxers makes it impossible to take credit for the biggest actual achievement of Trump v1.0: Operation Warp Speed, which led to a COVID vaccine much faster than it would have been developed without it. This is something he would actually like to crow about—and maybe claim he deserves the Nobel Prize for medicine for it.
So Trump has to decide if the blowback of keeping Kennedy and having kids die of measles will be more or less than the blowback from the anti-vaxxers if he fires Kennedy and replaces him with an experienced doctor.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a physician who could have torpedoed Kennedy's confirmation and chose not to, still doesn't have the guts to do what he very well knows is right: Demand that Kennedy be fired. He is chairman of the HELP Committee, which oversees HHS. The best he could do was tweet that high-profile departures from the CDC will require oversight from the HELP Committee. What does that mean? Cassidy stated this about the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices: "Serious allegations have been made about the meeting agenda, membership, and lack of scientific process being followed. These decisions directly impact children's health and the meeting should not occur until significant oversight has been conducted." He practiced medicine for 20 years before getting into politics. He doesn't need some Senate hearing to know what the problem is. He knows the problem is Robert Kennedy Jr. but is afraid if he says that out loud, Donald Trump will arrange for a primary opponent in 2026. A profile in courage this is not.
You know who is showing some courage? It is the governors of California, Oregon, and Washington, who yesterday announced a "health alliance" that will coordinate vaccine recommendations for the three states (and other states that may join later). This means that there will be two sets of recommendations, federal and state. In a joint statement, the three governors said that the CDC has become a political tool that peddles ideology instead of science.
This move raises a raft of questions about federalism that will soon be tested. For the most part, health care is run by the states. We will soon get questions like whether health insurance will cover vaccinations recommended by the states but not by the feds. Will pharmacies and GPs provide them? (V)