Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is pressuring Well being and Human Providers (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to resign after this week’s tumult on the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention (CDC) that noticed high officers depart after the company director was ousted.
Sanders, the rating member on the Senate Well being, Training, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, stated that he agrees with President Trump and Kennedy on making the general public “healthy again,” however warned that the issue is that “since coming into office President Trump and Mr. Kennedy have done exactly the opposite.”
“Despite the overwhelming opposition of the medical community, Secretary Kennedy has continued his longstanding crusade against vaccines and his advocacy of conspiracy theories that have been rejected repeatedly by scientific experts,” Sanders wrote in an op-ed for The New York Occasions, which was revealed Saturday morning.
“It is absurd to have to say this in 2025, but vaccines are safe and effective. That, of course, is not just my view,” the Vermont senator added. “Far more important, it is the overwhelming consensus of the medical and scientific communities.”
The Hill has reached out to HHS for remark.
Sanders’s name for Kennedy to resign comes because the CDC’s director Susan Monarez was fired on Wednesday. Her termination pushed 4 different high officers on the company to resign later that day, accusing the administration of weaponizing public well being.
Kennedy and the White Home have defended the firing of Monarez, with the press secretary telling reporters on Thursday that the president has the “authority to fire those who are not aligned with his mission.”
“The president and Secretary Kennedy are committed to restoring trust and transparency and credibility to the CDC by ensuring their leadership and their decisions are more public-facing, more accountable, strengthening our public health system and restoring it to its core mission of protecting Americans from communicable diseases, investing in innovation to prevent, detect and respond to future threats,” Leavitt stated in the course of the briefing.
The firing of Monarez and the resignations of officers rocked the general public well being neighborhood and drew blended reactions on Capitol Hill.
Sanders known as for a bipartisan investigation into the ouster of Monarez on Thursday, hammering the administration for making a “reckless” and “dangerous” determination.
Within the op-ed, Sanders criticized Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism and added that the “reality is that Secretary Kennedy has profited from and built a career on sowing mistrust in vaccines. Now, as head of H.H.S., he is using his authority to launch a full-blown war on science, on public health and on truth itself.”
The progressive senator argued that it’ll develop into “harder” for People to get “lifesaving vaccines” throughout Kennedy’s tenure at HHS and claimed that the previous presidential candidate will goal the childhood immunization schedule.
“The danger here is that diseases that have been virtually wiped out because of safe and effective vaccines will resurface and cause enormous harm,” Sanders wrote.
Sanders stated that the U.S. must be higher ready if one other pandemic, equivalent to COVID-19, breaks out and that Kennedy’s management is making the “situation even worse,” referencing HHS ending $500 million in federal funding for mRNA vaccine growth.
“Secretary Kennedy is putting Americans’ lives in danger, and he must resign,” Sanders wrote. “In his place, President Trump must listen to doctors and scientists and nominate a health secretary and a C.D.C. director who will protect the health and well-being of the American people, not carry out dangerous policies based on conspiracy theories.”
The Trump administration chosen Deputy HHS Secretary Jim O’Neill to be the performing director of the CDC on Thursday.
