Hundreds of current and former Department of Health and Human Services employees have signed a public letter to Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asking him to stop spreading “false and misleading” health information and increase security in response to the shooting at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters earlier this month.
It’s the latest pushback from federal public health workers against the changes wrought by Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement and a sign of how strongly the Aug. 8 shooting at the CDC rattled employees.
“The attack came amid growing mistrust in public institutions, driven by politicized rhetoric that has turned public health professionals from trusted experts into targets of villainization — and now, violence,” the letter reads. It calls for HHS to institute emergency procedures and alerts to protect against future attacks and to remove materials online that explicitly call out certain workers, including “DEI watchlists.”