Remove RFK Jr. and Restore Science-Based Leadership at HHS

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has blood on his hands, and now American children are paying the price. Over 1,563 measles cases have been confirmed in 2025 as of October 7th. Hundreds of students are quarantined in South Carolina and Minnesota. The U.S. is about to lose its measles elimination status for the first time since 2000. This didn’t happen by accident. Kennedy spent decades spreading vaccine misinformation. In 2019, he flew to Samoa and discouraged families from taking the measles vaccine, calling it a “natural experiment.” Eighty-three people died in the outbreak that followed, most of them children. His nonprofit, Children’s Health Defense, sued New York to block school vaccine requirements during a 2019 measles outbreak and lost. During the current crisis, instead of urging vaccination like every HHS secretary before him, Kennedy promoted vitamin A and cod liver oil on Fox News. Texas pediatricians reported children hospitalized with vitamin A toxicity after his statement. He hired David Geier, a vaccine skeptic disciplined by Maryland for practicing medicine without a license, to reinvestigate the debunked autism-vaccine link. Then he gutted the CDC’s measles response team. Kennedy isn’t reforming HHS. He’s destroying it from within. On October 10th, he fired 125 employees at SAMHSA, the agency overseeing the 988 suicide hotline, during an opioid crisis. He’s systematically dismantling the institutions that keep Americans safe because they conflict with his ideology. Republicans and Democrats should agree that children’s lives aren’t negotiable. Measles was eliminated in America for 25 years. Now it’s killing kids again. The medical journal *The Lancet* warned that Kennedy shows “troubling disregard for science and public welfare.” Former HHS Secretary under George H.W. Bush created SAMHSA with bipartisan support in 1992 because mental health and addiction services matter. Kennedy is undoing decades of progress, and every day he remains in office costs lives. I demand you call for his immediate removal and confirmation of a qualified public health leader who believes in science, not conspiracy theories.