Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a former environmental lawyer, has been promoting vaccine misinformation and public health conspiracy theories for the past 20 years. Now, as secretary of health and human services in the Trump administration, Kennedy is in charge of America's public health. In an essay in The New York Times, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders calls for Kennedy's resignation, saying he is endangering the health of the American people now and into the future. 

"It is absurd to have to say this in 2025, but vaccines are safe and effective," Sanders writes. "That, of course, is not just my view. Far more important, it is the overwhelming consensus of the medical and scientific communities."

Sanders writes that Kennedy believes that no vaccines are safe, and he is launching "a full-blown war on science, on public health and on truth itself. 

"What will this mean for the health and well-being of the American people?" Sanders says. "Short term, it will be harder for Americans to get lifesaving vaccines. Already, the Trump administration has effectively taken away Covid vaccines from many healthy younger adults and kids, unless they fight their way through our broken health care system. This means more doctor’s visits, more bureaucracy and more people paying higher out-of-pocket costs — if they can manage to get a vaccine at all.

"Covid is just the beginning," Sanders continues. "Mr. Kennedy’s next target may be the childhood immunization schedule, the list of recommended vaccines that children receive to protect them from diseases like measles, chickenpox and polio. The danger here is that diseases that have been virtually wiped out because of safe and effective vaccines will resurface and cause enormous harm."

What is your opinion? Can America (and the world) withstand Kennedy's anti-vaccine, conspiracy theories? And what is the future of the American public health system with the loss of top scientists and leaders at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention?

Resources to read:

• Bernie Sanders: Kennedy Must Resign, New York Times, Aug. 30, 2025
• We Ran the CDC: Kennedy is Endangering Every American's Health, New York Times, Sept. 1, 2025

[Photo credit: Mark Peterson for The New York Times, Aug. 30, 2025]