Robert F. Kennedy Jr., US secretary of Well being and Human Providers (HHS), throughout a cupboard assembly on the White Home in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, August 26, 2025.
(Aaron Schwartz / CNP / Bloomberg by way of Getty Pictures)
Who is aware of you higher than the household you grew up with?
You won’t bear in mind the letter Caroline Kennedy wrote to the US Senate in January about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—or “Bobby,” as she known as him. However it was vitally essential then, and it stays so now—as a result of she was talking not as a political actor however as RFK Jr.’s cousin, somebody she grew up with and has recognized all her life.
Right here’s Caroline Kennedy’s stark conclusion:
The American healthcare system, for all its flaws, is the envy of the world. Its docs and nurses, researchers, scientists, and caregivers are probably the most devoted individuals I do know. Day-after-day, they offer their lives to heal and save others. They deserve a educated chief who’s dedicated to proof and excellence. They deserve a Secretary dedicated to advancing cutting-edge medication to save lots of lives, not rejecting the advances we now have already made. They deserve a steady, ethical, and moral individual on the helm of this significant company. They deserve higher than Bobby Kennedy—and so do the remainder of us.
Earlier in her letter, Kennedy stated, “I’ve recognized Bobby my complete life; we grew up collectively. It’s no shock that he retains birds of prey as pets, as a result of he himself is a predator.” These phrases are stunning; all of the extra so as a result of that is one member of the family rendering this judgment about one other member of the family. Think about what it could take to speak like this, so publicly, about somebody you may have recognized perpetually.
We will’t say we weren’t warned—and the reality of Caroline Kennedy’s phrases rings louder with every passing day.
Final week on the US Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, we noticed this predator in motion.
Present Difficulty
Over the previous few months, RFK Jr. has introduced the internationally famend company to its knees. He has proposed cutting the agency’s budget by near 50 %, destroyed packages accountable for monitoring maternal health and lead poisoning of children within the US at CDC, disbanded the Heart for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics and the Division of Environmental Well being Science and Apply throughout the National Center for Environmental Health, which is supposed to maintain our water secure to drink and tackle environmental causes of childhood bronchial asthma. In an article in April, reporters at Wired documented the 1000’s of CDC workers who had been laid off, endangering these packages and others serving tens of millions of Individuals.
However all of this was a mere prologue to the Wednesday Night time Bloodbath at CDC final week, by which RFK Jr. tried to fire the brand new CDC director, Dr. Susan Monarez, whom he had chosen to run the company and had simply been confirmed by the Senate earlier this summer time.
The precipitating occasions right here concern vaccines. Kennedy has been waging a full-scale marketing campaign to destroy vaccination in the USA. Many who observe these points will find out about his purge of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and the set up of his cronies to take over the important thing physique; the unilateral decision by RFK and his puppets, FDA’s Marty Makary and NIH’s Jay Bhattacharya, to yank Covid vaccines from youngsters and pregnant girls; and his cancellation of analysis on mRNA vaccines (including those targeted at preventing cancer).
However when Kennedy told CDC director Monarez she needed to rubber-stamp the suggestions popping out of the upcoming September ACIP assembly—which might probably limit entry to Covid vaccines and topic a bunch of different essential vaccines to the scrutiny of his new handpicked committee of incompetents and ideologues, in addition to hearth senior CDC employees with duty over vaccines—she stated no. She additionally known as Senate majority chief John Thune and Senators Invoice Cassidy, Susan Collins, and Shelley Moore Capito to enlist their assist.
This set in movement her dismissal by RFK Jr. Nonetheless, Monarez rejected his authority to do that and employed two of the most important attorneys in DC to battle for her. Many exterior of CDC didn’t and don’t know Monarez, however on this second, she has proven extra braveness and guts than anybody within the Trump administration up to now.
And it didn’t cease there. Three senior employees— CDC chief medical officer Debra Houry, Nationwide Heart for Immunization and Respiratory Illnesses director Demetre Daskalakis, and Nationwide Heart for Rising and Zoonotic Infectious Illnesses director Dan Jernigan—resigned together in protest. I urge individuals to read the resignation letters of all three of those former civil servants; together with Monarez, they’ve proven what braveness and guts, self-sacrifice, and sense of responsibility imply in a time of common ethical degradation amongst our leaders.
By final Thursday afternoon, lots of of CDC staffers had staged a clap-out, left their workplaces, and took to the streets to suppor Monarez, Houry, Daskalakis, and Jernigan. And the revolt has continued: This Wednesday, greater than 1,000 present and former HHS staffers had signed a letter calling on RFK Jr. to resign.
Whereas the CDC has been damaged considerably, and it’ll take years and years to rebuild, I believe RFK Jr. miscalculated how a lot backlash his actions final week would face. The tactical brilliance of Houry, Daskalakis, and Jernigan’s coordinated resignations galvanized many within the public well being world, and, extra importantly, awoke politicians on each side of the aisle who’ve slumbered throughout this lengthy siege of the CDC. Even Bill Cassidy has found a spine and known as for the September ACIP assembly to be postponed and for the current firings to be scrutinized by his committee—although whether or not he’ll observe by way of or RFK Jr. will simply ignore him as he has since his affirmation is but to be seen.
Standard
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Inside hours, columns and in-house editorials criticizing RFK Jr. appeared within the normally supine mainstream media, in The Washington Post, USA Right now, and elsewhere, with USA Today’s Rex Huppke summing it up properly: “RFK Jr. is an anti-vaccine kook destroying the CDC. Impeach him.” In The New York Occasions on Saturday, Bernie Sanders called for RFK Jr.’s resignation, and Maureen Dowd, who nearly died of rubella when she was 3 years outdated, savaged Kennedy, his enablers like Cassidy, and his White Home champions, notably Stephen Miller.
It’s straightforward to border what is going on now by way of the standard filter of politics, and the White Home is keen to take action, making the critique of RFK Jr. just another partisan battle. However I would like us to return and sit with Caroline Kennedy’s letter:
His basement, his storage, and his dorm room have been the facilities of the motion the place medication have been obtainable, and he loved displaying off how he put child chickens and mice within the blender to feed his hawks. It was typically a perverse scene of despair and violence.
Overlook the medication. Mirror on the pathology, the cruelty, the “perverse scene of despair and violence.” Ms. Kennedy paints a chilling image. This isn’t a political critique of our HHS secretary; it’s the origin story of a brand new American psycho. And earlier than you cut back this to name-calling on my half, learn the letter once more. Then juxtapose the portrait Caroline Kennedy gives with the person in the present day, the big energy he has to do injury, to inflict struggling and dying upon us all, and what he has achieved to date. The case is evident: He ought to by no means have been let wherever close to public well being, healthcare and biomedical science on this nation. Congress must act. And we have to make them do it. RFK Jr. must go. Now.
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