A Democratic lawmaker has moved to have Robert F. Kennedy Jr. impeached over his conduct in office as Health and Human Services Secretary.
“I am not one for political theater,” Michigan Rep. Haley Stevens, who’s currently running for one of the state’s Senate seats, told the New York Times. “I’m for standing up for the health and safety of the people I represent. It’s pretty clear that these are life-and-death issues for folks.”
“Secretary Kennedy is carrying out a scientific coup d’etat of America’s public health and his conduct warrants impeachment,” she added in a letter to party colleagues. “[He] represents the single largest self-created threat to public health, public trust and the future of scientific progress in the United States. If we don’t act, Americans will suffer. The secretary must go.”
Stevens filed articles of impeachment Wednesday against Kennedy, who has faced a near-constant firestorm of criticism and public outrage for measures he has implemented at HHS.
Since first assuming the office earlier this year, Kennedy, a known anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist, has fired the entire U.S. vaccine-advisory committee and replaced them with a new panel that includes several individuals linked to anti-vaccine activism.
He’s rolled back long-standing vaccine policies, such as a universal newborn Hepatitis B vaccination recommendation, and dismantled or gutted large parts of his department, including massive research budget cuts, layoffs, and structural reorganizations across agencies like the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Kennedy has meanwhile continued to push widely debunked claims, such as that vaccines cause autism and that water fluoridation policies are a threat to public health. He has also reduced HHS transparency by removing a more than 50-year-old policy requiring public comment on HHS rulemaking.
The Times reports that Stevens, in her filing, is “accusing Mr Kennedy of an assault on the public health system that constitutes high crimes and misdemeanors” and “a violation of his oath of office.”
Democratic leaders are said to have declined to back Stevens’ motion, with some party colleagues reportedly viewing it as “the politically motivated move of a candidate who has struggled to gain traction in a heated primary” in the Michigan Senate race.
But Stevens is not alone in viewing Kennedy as a threat to public health. Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers raised concerns about Kennedy’s actions at HHS during a fiery Senate hearing in September, and public health experts have repeatedly called for his resignation.
On Wednesday, Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent, has scheduled a Senate vote granting lawmakers an opportunity to formally signal their disapproval of Kennedy’s time in office thus far.
That move may appear less dramatic than Steven’s impeachment motion, the Times notes, but has apparently been drafted with an opportunity for Republicans to also voice their concerns without potentially triggering the wrath of the White House.
The Daily Beast has reached out to HHS for comment on this story. A spokesperson told the Times the secretary “remains focused on the work of improving Americans’ health and lowering costs, not on partisan political stunts that have no merit.”
