The Department of Health and Human Services is in a state of crisis — down thousands of employees, facing health emergencies such as Ebola and the resurgence of measles, lacking confirmed leaders for the CDC and Surgeon General’s office — but you wouldn’t know it if you followed the man in charge.
Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reportedly rarely visits the department’s Washington headquarters, insiders told The New York Times.
When he is present, Kennedy reportedly works only six hour days, rarely interacts with his staff, and scrolls on his phone while appearing “checked out” in meetings with top division staff, officials said.
“Every day that goes by without Secretary Kennedy’s long overdue resignation is a day American lives are put further in harm’s way,” the advocacy group Protect Our Care said in a statement in response to the picture of Kennedy’s alleged lax attitude towards managing the department’s sprawling health portfolio.
Others are dismayed Kennedy hasn’t publicly addressed the Ebola outbreak in Africa after the World Health Organization declared it an emergency last month, other than a brief remark: “We’re working on it.” Kennedy also reportedly hasn’t made any known visits to the CDC since August.
Instead, Kennedy has reportedly honed in on a few pet issues, such as food guidelines, pesticide exposure, and anti-vaccine research, delegating away or simply seeming to neglect other causes, sources told the paper.
The Independent has requested comment from HHS.
Current and former employees have been warning of plunging morale and preparedness within the health agency, whose activities include vital functions such as the CDC, FDA and National Institutes of Health.
Between Trump’s inauguration and this April, HHS shrunk by about 17,000 employees, thanks to a mix of DOGE-inspired layoffs, early retirements and resignations in protest of Kennedy’s push to question mainstream health science.
“It took them just a few weeks to break things that are going to take decades to fix,” a former staffer in HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary told Healthcare Dive in April. “I don’t think people realize how detrimental this will end up being.”
About half of the National Institutes of Health centers are run by acting officials, according to an analysis by The New York Times.
“I fear the experience, leadership and need for decisive action just won’t be there,” Daniel Jernigan, who resigned in August from his position as the director of the CDC’s national center for emerging and zoonotic infectious diseases, told The Guardian earlier this year.
Similar cuts have taken place across the government since Trump took office.
The Department of Justicehas cut more than 4,000 employees since Trump returned to the White House, an April analysis found.
Across federal agencies, more than 10,000 lawyers have left the government.
The U.S. diplomatic corps has similarly been slashed, and more than half of U.S. ambassadorships are unfilled by full-time appointees, according to the American Foreign Service Association.
More cuts could be on the way.
This week, the president signed an executive order aimed at converting about 8,000 government workers, largely top federal civil service staff, into at-will employees, which would allow the government to fire them without cause.
