See the beyond alarming NYT story below; reaction from Kayla Hancock, Director of Protect Our Care’s Public Health Project: “Accounts from within the Trump HHS paint an unsettling picture of RFK Jr.’s absentee leadership amid public health crises both present and looming. Trump’s health secretary hasn’t stepped foot inside the CDC in nearly a year despite historic measles outbreaks inflamed by his own anti-vax propaganda. When Kennedy does show up to the HHS office – typically for just 6 hours a day, which must be nice – he isolates himself from top staff and ignores lawmaker requests for months on end. While Kennedy can’t be bothered to involve himself in spiraling health threats like Ebola, he finds plenty of time to do a shirtless photo spread with Kid Rock, babble for hours on a his taxpayer-funded vanity podcast on topics like teen sperm, and orchestrate a wasteful department-wide fishing expedition for any data he can use to breathe life into his debunked anti-vax agenda. Worse, while RFK Jr. is unwilling to do his job, he’s perpetuated a dangerous HHS leadership void for months, refusing to fill vital roles with actual competent, qualified people who would pick up his slack. Every day that goes by without Secretary Kennedy’s long overdue resignation is a day American lives are put further in harm’s way.”
NYT: Kennedy Shows Minimal Engagement With Vast Health Portfolio
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has demonstrated little interest in managing his sprawling department as he focuses on food and vaccine policies, according to colleagues.
June 7, 2026 // By Sheryl Gay Stolberg
Shortly after the World Health Organization declared the Ebola outbreak in Africa a public health emergency, a reporter asked Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. if he was worried about the virus. Six Americans had already been exposed. His response was brief: “Yeah, we’re working on it.”
In the nearly three weeks since, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention imposed travel restrictions to keep the virus from coming to the United States, Mr. Kennedy has made no public comments about the spreading outbreak. He has received very few briefings about the virus from C.D.C. scientists, although he speaks daily to the acting director, according to people familiar with his response.
Mr. Kennedy’s approach to the crisis reflects his broader management of the Department of Health and Human Services, which affects the health of 340 million Americans and provides health care to 40 percent of the population through Medicare and Medicaid.
Mr. Kennedy has shown little interest in managing the details of work in his department, according to multiple colleagues. Instead, they say, he is single-mindedly focused on his top priorities, including food recommendations and pesticide exposures, and hunting for evidence to support his long-held beliefs that vaccines are harmful.
Deeply mistrustful of career civil officials, the secretary has surrounded himself with a close circle of handpicked advisers and stacked agencies with political appointees aligned with his views. While major posts have sat vacant and a wave of veteran health experts and scientists have departed, Mr. Kennedy has remained isolated from much of the department’s top staff.
He rarely engages with members of Congress, colleagues said, unless he is asked to testify. He has made just one known visit to the C.D.C., after a gunman opened fire on its headquarters and killed a police officer last August.
This examination of Mr. Kennedy’s leadership style is based on the accounts of a dozen people who have had direct contact with him as secretary, as well as other health department employees, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution.
Mr. Kennedy and the department did not directly address questions about his leadership style.
The secretary’s detachment from much of the work of the agency, along with the administration’s deep staff cuts and his attacks on career staff, have driven down morale, they say. It’s a dynamic that could threaten the department’s ability to protect Americans in a crisis, according to public health experts and former secretaries.
Critics say one of the most urgent problems is Mr. Kennedy’s failure to act more swiftly to address a leadership vacuum. There is no surgeon general. Around half of the 27 institutes and centers at N.I.H. are run by acting directors. The acting chief of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases was recently fired, as was the nation’s top drug regulator.
The leader of the Food and Drug Administration quit last month under pressure over tobacco policy. Mr. Kennedy fired the C.D.C. director last August; it is now run on an acting basis by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who already has another huge job as director of the National Institutes of Health.
“You would never accept a major corporation operating this way,” said Michael T. Osterholm, the director of the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, who has advised health secretaries of both parties.
“If the C.E.O. lacked deep expertise in the company’s business and the leaders of its most important divisions were missing, investors would revolt,” Dr. Osterholm said. “Here, the stakes are much higher. The mission is protecting the health and safety of the American people, and we’re confronting serious disease threats without permanent leadership in some of our most important public health agencies.”
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A Remote Presence
Mr. Kennedy keeps a low profile at the health department’s headquarters, a hulking building that faces the National Mall near the U.S. Capitol.
When he is in town, he exercises at his gym before work, then usually arrives at about 10 a.m. and leaves by 4 p.m., his colleagues say. He spends much of his day in closed-door meetings, according to those who work with him, and has little direct engagement with his staff.
Every Tuesday at 10:30 a.m., the chiefs of the department’s 13 operating divisions gather in the secretary’s suite to update leadership on their activities. At the outset of his tenure, Mr. Kennedy was rarely there, either virtually or in person, according to three people familiar with his schedule. Since Mr. Klomp’s elevation, he now shows up once a month. But when he does attend, he often appears disengaged and spends the time scrolling on his phone, according to people in attendance. Several described him as “checked out.”
Once, when he arrived to the meeting 15 minutes late, Mr. Kennedy offered a self-deprecating apology, according to one person in the room: “Thank you for putting up with my dysfunctional self.”
Health department officials did not respond to a request for comment about the meeting or Mr. Kennedy’s remark.
His disinterest in matters that are not high on his priority list has meant that he has not engaged at critical moments, colleagues said.
When measles killed two children in Texas early last year, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who led the response but has since left the agency, asked repeatedly to brief Mr. Kennedy but was rebuffed, he said.
Susan Monarez, who briefly served as Mr. Kennedy’s C.D.C. director before she was fired, had little direct interaction with the health secretary until she ran afoul of him on vaccine policy. She later told senators that during a series of tense meetings with the secretary, she was “directed to only work with the political appointees that he had put in place at C.D.C., and not to speak or work with the career scientists.”
In the current Ebola crisis, Mr. Kennedy has left the department’s response to Dr. Bhattacharya, a health economist with no prior experience in public health even though he is leading the C.D.C. Dr. Bhattacharya, who also led the response to a recent outbreak of hantavirus, wrote an opinion essay published in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday saying that while the “risk to the American public remains low, Ebola is dangerous.”
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But key vacancies inside the health department have made the response more challenging, people familiar with situation said.
The Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, responsible for pandemic preparedness and for standing up field hospitals and quarantine facilities in Kenya, is currently run on an acting basis by John Knox, a former Los Angeles firefighter who founded the group Firefighters4Freedom during the pandemic to fight vaccine mandates.
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As the outbreak has spread, Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered a tacit rebuke of Mr. Kennedy’s move last year to withhold funding from an international vaccine alliance, suggesting the State Department was taking back management of the U.S. relationship with the alliance.
“We are going to re-engage,” Mr. Rubio told lawmakers last week. “We need to drive this to an outcome.”
A Daunting Portfolio
Under any circumstances, the Department of Health and Human Services is difficult to run. It has 13 operating divisions covering a vast array of issues, such as child welfare and pandemic preparedness. Past secretaries from both political parties say there are three main ingredients for success: understanding the work of the divisions, strong crisis communication and muscular coordination with state, local and international health leaders.
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He travels often and makes aggressive use of his platform to promote his priorities, including on social media and “The Secretary Kennedy Podcast,” which began in April. Last week, he made stops in Wisconsin to spotlight the work of dairy farmers and faith-based groups working in addiction recovery, and New Hampshire to announce an effort to combat Lyme disease.
Colleagues say he also makes visits to Scottsdale, Ariz., where his son and daughter-in-law live, and Florida, where he stays at the Palm Beach mansion owned by Dr. Oz.
After Memorial Day, the public got a glimpse of him there. Mr. Kennedy posted video of himself, in a suit and tie, capturing two black racer snakes on Dr. Oz’s patio. One of them bit him.