Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. invoked his father, Robert F. Kennedy, during a Senate hearing to justify the Trump administration’s controversial reforms at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The hearing, which saw brief interruptions by a heckler, centered on the administration’s decision to fire CDC Director Susan Monarez and the subsequent resignations of several senior officials. Critics, including fellow Democrats, have accused the Trump administration of politicizing public health and undermining scientific integrity.
Kennedy, who is also the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, emphasized the necessity of ‘bold, competent, and creative new leadership’ at the CDC, drawing upon a quote from his father’s 1963 speech to the United States Conference of Mayors. The quote, which addresses the challenges of implementing change, underscored Kennedy’s argument that the reforms aim to restore public trust in the agency after its controversial handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Amid the CDC shakeup, over 1,000 current and former federal health officials penned a letter this week calling for the HHS secretary’s resignation, arguing he is ‘endangering the nation’s health.’ Following Monarez’s ouster, several other top CDC officials resigned in protest of the Trump administration’s policies on public health.
Kennedy also penned an op-ed earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal, echoing his Thursday remarks on Capitol Hill that the changes coming to the CDC are restoring confidence in an agency that lost the public’s trust due to its response to the COVID-19 virus. The piece emphasized that most CDC rank-and-file staff are honest public servants who can now perform their duties as scientists without bowing to politics.
The invocation of his father’s words by Kennedy is not the first time the Kennedy family has been a focal point in his approach to governance. In the lead-up to President Donald Trump’s 2024 election victory, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s sister, Kerry Kennedy, slammed him for supporting Trump and ‘desecrat[ing] and trampl[ing] and set[ting] fire’ to their dad’s memory. This has added to the personal and political tensions surrounding Kennedy’s role in the Trump administration’s health policies.
The quote from RFK Jr.’s father comes from a speech he made to the United States Conference of Mayors in Chicago in 1963. The remarks came while he was serving as attorney general under former Democratic Party president Lyndon B. Johnson. The speech discussed contemporary economic stresses and poverty in the early 1960s, noting they had resulted in an ‘unwanted stockpile of idle youth,’ according to a copy of the speech shared by the Department of Justice (DOJ). The then-attorney general suggested the issue was exacerbated by a lack of equal access to education, vocation training, and poor housing that was occurring at the time.
‘The hardest task is to appoint and incorporate in our work a group of men and women with the power and willingness to look at our community difficulties, dissect them, criticize areas of shortcoming, and make meaningful suggestions,’ Kennedy said during his speech to the conference of mayors. ‘Sometimes, too, it is hard to accept that sort of recommendation. For, sometimes, it carries with it announced or implied criticism of programs that have failed us in the past. Change means that someone’s professional feathers will be ruffled, that a glass-topped desk might be moved to another office or abandoned, that pet programs might die.’
‘Progress is the nice word we like to use. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies,’ Kennedy continued. ‘The willingness to confront that change will determine how much we shall really do for our youth and how truly meaningful our efforts will be.’
The backlash against Kennedy’s approach has been significant, with previous CDC directors accusing him of endangering all Americans in a recent New York Times essay. These criticisms highlight the deep divisions within the public health community over the direction of the CDC under the Trump administration and its new leadership.