One of the underappreciated political developments of the year is the release of “dissent” letters: joint statements signed by government officials eager to express outrage at the radicalism and abuses they’ve seen behind the scenes at a growing number of federal departments and agencies.
To date, these dissent letters have been issued by employees at agencies that include the National Institutes of Health, NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation and FEMA.
The newest installment, however, is arguably the most dramatic. USA Today reported:
A group of more than 1,000 current and former Department of Health and Human Services employees released a letter on Sept. 3 demanding Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s resignation. … The letter, which is addressed to Kennedy and members of Congress, argues the secretary ‘continues to endanger the nation’s health.’
The effort was an escalation of sorts. Two weeks earlier, several hundred HHS staffers urged the conspiratorially-minded health secretary to start prioritizing federal health workers’ safety and curtail his habit of “spreading inaccurate health information.”
Soon after, Kennedy helped to orchestrate the firing of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez, which further destabilized the agency and raised unprecedented questions about whether the CDC would survive Kennedy’s tenure and Donald Trump’s second term.
And so, current and former HHS officials have kicked things up a notch and are demanding Kennedy’s resignation.
“We swore an oath to support and defend the United States Constitution and to serve the American people,” the signatories wrote. “Our oath requires us to speak out when the Constitution is violated and the American people are put at risk. 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.
“Should he decline to resign, we call upon the President and U.S. Congress to appoint a new Secretary of Health and Human Services, one whose qualifications and experience ensure that health policy is informed by independent and unbiased peer-reviewed science. We expect those in leadership to act when the health of Americans is at stake.”
As of this writing, 1,040 HHS officials, whose names were provided to Congress, have signed the joint statement — a display without modern precedent for a sizable contingent of federal civil servants.
The HHS officials join a growing number of Senate Democrats who are calling on the beleaguered, anti-vaccine secretary to step down from his position (that he never should’ve been confirmed to in the first place). As for whether these calls are likely to have their intended effect, it’s difficult to be optimistic. Kennedy’s fate appears to be in Trump’s hands, and by all appearances, the president hasn’t soured on the secretary — at least not yet. Indeed, just last week, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller described RFK Jr. as “one of the world’s foremost experts on public health.” (I’m not sure how Miller managed to deliver the line with a straight face, but he did.) Miller soon after added that Kennedy “has been a crown jewel of this administration.” The comments were, of course, utterly bonkers, although they are also evidence that the White House doesn’t appear especially eager to show the hapless health secretary the door.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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