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Many current and former employees say the actions of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are undermining the agency’s role in safeguarding public health.
March 23, 2026, 5:30 a.m. ET
When Donald J. Trump announced that he was choosing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, he promised to let Kennedy, who had amassed a large following while spreading falsehoods about vaccines, “go wild on health.”
Since his confirmation in February 2025, Kennedy has tried to do exactly that. He has taken particular aim at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, calling it “the most corrupt agency at H.H.S. and maybe the government.” At least 2,400 people, or 18 percent of the C.D.C. staff, have been fired or have resigned since January 2025. The secretary’s critics say that his goal is to dismantle the nation’s vaccination programs, in which the C.D.C. plays a key part.
For my full magazine article, I interviewed more than 40 people who work at the C.D.C. or who left during Trump’s second term. Some sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared that speaking out would cost them their jobs or subject them to retaliation from the administration.
In response to my requests for comment and a detailed list of questions, Andrew Nixon, a department spokesman, said in a statement: “Within a year, Secretary Kennedy restored the C.D.C. on its core mission of fighting infectious disease by eliminating mission creep and replacing leaders who resisted reform.”
But current and former employees expressed fear that agency scientists are being sidelined, political appointees are taking charge and a vital public health institution is being remade into a vehicle for ideologues.
Communications were ‘hijacked’
An early directive that all public communications by agency staff had to be reviewed before it was released left scientists unable to communicate with outside partners or even internally.
Daniel Jernigan, the former director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, told me:
You had the president and whoever else saying, “Stop talking.” I think what they probably meant was, “Don’t engage publicly or in a high-profile way.” But you had a whole new layer of people with no public health experience, no government experience and no scientific knowledge, and they didn’t know what to do. And so everybody was told: “Don’t engage. You can’t even get on the phone.”
The C.D.C.’s public communications would be taken over by political appointees. Susan A. Wang, a former senior medical adviser in the global immunization division, said:
We had a very stringent scientific process for vetting information that would get published on the C.D.C. website. Everything was checked and double-checked. And for political appointees to take over the means of communication is devastating, and also dangerous. Now, some things are correct and some are not, which means that you can’t trust any of it.
