ABC NEWS – More than 1,000 current and former employees across the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) signed a letter on Wednesday morning calling for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s resignation.
Addressed to Kennedy and members of Congress, the signatories accused the secretary of endangering the health of Americans.
Save HHS, the group behind the letter, told ABC News it’s been sent to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions; Senate Committee on Finance and the House Committee on Energy and Commerce as well as Majority and Minority leadership.
“We swore an oath to support and defend the United States Constitution and to serve the American people. Our oath requires us to speak out when the Constitution is violated and the American people are put at risk,” the letter reads, in part.
It continues, “Thus, we warn the President, Congress, and the Public that Secretary Kennedy’s actions are compromising the health of this nation, and we demand Secretary Kennedy’s resignation.”
In a statement to ABC News, HHS communications director Andrew Nixon said the CDC “has been broken for a long time” and it will take “sustained reform and more personnel changes” to restore trust in the institution.
“From his first day in office, [Kennedy] pledged to check his assumptions at the door — and he asked every HHS colleague to do the same,” the statement read, in part.
“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.”
Employees from almost every agency signed the letter, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health …