Aug 30 (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders on Saturday called on Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to resign, days after a senior public health official was fired and four others resigned in disputes over Kennedy’s unorthodox opposition to vaccines.
Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats, wrote in a New York Times guest essay that Kennedy is “endangering the health of the American people now and into the future.”
This week, Kennedy ousted the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Susan Monarez, less than a month into her tenure, deepening disarray at the nation’s main public health agency. Monarez had refused to adopt new limitations on the availability of some vaccines urged by Kennedy, saying they went against scientific evidence.
Four other senior CDC officials resigned in protest, citing anti-vaccine policies and misinformation promoted by Kennedy and his team; hundreds of their colleagues walked out of the CDC’s headquarters in Atlanta in support of the departing leaders.
Sanders, the ranking member of the Senate’s health committee and an opponent of Kennedy’s confirmation earlier this year, wrote that Kennedy ousted Monarez because she refused “to act as a rubber stamp for his dangerous policies.”
I mean the fact that it’s not every single democrat in Washington demanding this tells you all you need to know
What would change if they all did?
Every time a Democrat is President, I get an earful about how we need 60 votes in the Senate to do anything. Currently, the Republicans have 53.
Senatorial obstruction of the rest of the Republican agenda for '25/'26 could conceivably go a long way towards removing RFK Jr.
Barely any of this agenda is passing the legislative. It’s nearly entirely executive overreach. Democrats are unwilling to do that so nothing gets done. Republicans don’t care.
The Big Beautiful Bill reallocated trillions of dollars. Blocking that would have hampered Trump’s agenda significantly, simply by depriving him of the funds to pursue it.
And every single Democrat in the Senate voted against it. It passed anyway.
That was passed under the special rules of budget reconciliation. The Dems are shitheels but they did act pretty aggressively against the big bullshit bill (as much as they could within the “rules”).
Yeah the comment you replied to makes no sense. Democrats have gotten their picks confirmed, everything after that is actions under the executive when it comes to RFK.
What the hell are you talking about? He passed his entire legislative agenda with the full complicity of the Democratic leadership.
What kind of Fox News-equivalent bullshit reality are you living in? The Dem leadership are totally inept and feckless, but they certainly didn’t vote for this shit.
I can see how obstruction could make a difference (though not guaranteed). But not how them all saying he should be out would change anything.
Faith in the Democratic Party possibly
I see them as protecting their dignity by not screaming into the void. Sanders isn’t accomplishing anything.
He is a much needed voice of dissent that proves that someone, anyone, cares about what is going on. Anyone who does not speak out or act out against this is complicit, or else terrified into complacency and therefore still complicit.
Bernie can’t oust RFK on his own but he can raise a banner for others to rally around and perhaps force legislative action about this. It might happen. If he stayed silent then it is guaranteed not to happen.
A voice of dissent… in the New York Times? Few people who read the NYT are Republicans, and few of those Republicans are the sort that support Trump. Bernie is preaching to the choir here, and I don’t see why you assume that people who don’t preach to the choir actually don’t care.
Inaction in a situation like this is complicity. To hell with dignity, these people are fucking fascists