By Congressman Kweisi Mfume (D-MD- 07)
When Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was sworn in as our nation’s 26th Secretary of Health and Human Services this February, he entered his office promising to lead a movement to “Make America Healthy Again.” Several months into Secretary Kennedy’s tenure, it is clear that he has no intention of following through with that promise. He has slashed invaluable programs, undermined the public’s trust in vaccines and mishandled an ongoing health crisis.
Credit: Courtesy photo
The Trump administration has sworn that they would focus on tackling waste, fraud and abuse – and they have broken their word.
The day before Secretary Kennedy was sworn into office, the Trump administration fired more than 5,000 probationary workers at HHS – and Secretary Kennedy followed that up by cutting some 10,000 positions in the agency. He directed the CDC to shutter the Office on Smoking and Health, despite the growing youth use of vapes and the fact that lung cancer is our nation’s leading cause of cancer death. The CDC’s team responsible for tracking, analyzing and publicizing data around drownings were all fired, despite a rising rate of drowning deaths, which remain the leading killer of children ages 1 through 4 years old.
His department has devastated the offices dedicated to researching and improving racial health disparities, including the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities, ignoring the very real issues that lead to higher mortality rates in minority groups.
In addition to the damage that Secretary Kennedy is doing to the Department of Health and Human Services as an institution, he is actively working to undermine the American public’s trust in vaccines, one of the true medical miracles of the modern era. Without any scientific backing, Secretary Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again Report – when it wasn’t citing non-existent, AI-generated sources – called for a review of the childhood vaccine schedule. In order to secure that review, Secretary Kennedy dismissed all 17 non-partisan vaccine experts on the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP), replacing them with his own hand-picked panel, including several vaccine skeptics. To the shock of very few, when the newly-built ACIP held its first meeting, they heard testimony from a noted anti-vaccine activist and promptly voted to rescind longstanding recommendations for flu vaccines containing thimerosal, a vaccine ingredient that Secretary Kennedy has long opposed.
The concerted effort to undermine American trust in vaccines is deeply unnerving, and we can already see its impacts. The measles outbreak that began in Texas has spread nationwide, pushing confirmed cases to their highest level in over 30 years. Not even a year into the latest outbreak, measles has claimed three American lives – the same number of deaths that the disease caused from 2001 to 2024.
Secretary Kennedy has already mismanaged one health crisis – we cannot afford to wait and see how he would handle a larger crisis. The stakes are too high, and the American people deserve better.
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