RFK Jr. Insists He Hasn't Fired 'Any Working Scientists' ― After Firing Hundreds Of Them
'You made it very clear here today you have no knowledge whatsoever of the absolutely amazing scientists and researchers who you have callously fired,' said Alsobrooks.
'I didn't fire any working scientists,' Kennedy said.
'That, sir, is not true either,' replied Alsobrooks.
'It is true,' repeated Kennedy
'It is not true,' Alsobrooks said, moving on.
He made the same claim when the Maryland senator later brought up a 30-year program he axed at his agency, the Safe to Sleep campaign, along with all of its staff. He said it again to Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), the chairman of the committee, at the start of the hearing.
'The cuts we have made to date are administrative cuts. As far as I know we have not fired any working scientists,' said Kennedy. 'There are some people who were scientists that were doing IT or administration ... who did lose their jobs. But in terms of working scientists, our policy was to make sure none of them were lost and that that research continues.'
That sounds nice. But also it is not true. Kennedy has been firing hundreds, if not thousands, of scientists and researchers doing critical work at various agencies under HHS. It's not even as if he's been doing this in secret; it's been widelyreported for months.
Under his direction, the National Institutes of Health, the world's top biomedical research agency, axed 1,200 employees in February. A doctor behind award-winning research on Parkinson's disease was among the leading NIH scientists pushed out in April. Top scientific leaders at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and at the Food and Drug Administration were reassignedto remote Indian Health Service regions. Key scientists working on the bird flu at the Center for Veterinary Medicine were fired, as were nearly a dozen in-house senior scientists at NIH who worked on neuroscience.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month carried out mass firings that included a group of scientists who researched traumatic brain injury. Still more CDC scientists were fired after their entire lab tracking STIs and hepatitis outbreaks was axed.
It's not clear if Kennedy is intentionally lying about not firing scientists or doesn't understand the scope of damage he's causing to the work of HHS, or if this a matter of semantics. Maybe he's bristling at the verb 'fire' to describe how he has been aggressively dismissing scientists from their employment or ordering scientists to give up their jobs.
An HHS spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Alsobrooks said Kennedy is just lying, even as it's so absurdly obvious.
'I think that RFK Jr. clearly believes that the more he tells a lie, the more it becomes the truth,' she told HuffPost on Thursday.
Kennedy's claim that HHS scientists have all kept their jobs 'flies in the face of the reality that there are hundreds of scientists from the NIH, CDC and FDA who have lost their jobs as a part of his plan to overhaul the department.'
The Maryland senator should know. NIH is based in her state, and she's been hearing from scientists ― constituents ― for months who have lost their jobs or grants at various HHS agencies. She heard from some of those fired scientists after Wednesday's hearing, when Kennedy insisted he hadn't fired them.
'One is working specifically – or was working, before his untimely termination – on Parkinson's, and the other was working on doing some critical research around hepatitis,' said Alsobrooks. 'They heard the lie, you know, or the misrepresentation, should we call it, when he said working scientists had not been fired when they, in fact, have been.'
HuffPost heard from some fired federal scientists after Kennedy's hearing, too. One, who'd been an epidemiologist working on infectious diseases, said they were fired by Kennedy along with their entire team, which was dozens of epidemiologists and health scientists.
'RFK seems unaware of what programs were actually affected by the [Reduction in Force],' said this scientist, who requested anonymity to speak freely.
Asked what they made of Kennedy's repeated claims that he hadn't fired any 'working scientists,' this fired scientist simply said, 'It is not true.'
'This has consequences for public health as the programs are suddenly eliminated or severely reduced,' they said. 'It also severely affects the thousands of scientists who suddenly lost our careers and faced a challenging job market with so many public health cuts damaging our field.'
A local chapter of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union that represents more than 700,000 federal employees and D.C. government workers, caught Kennedy's comments, and pushed back with data and charts.
'We find that approximately 1,586 civil servants affected by the RIF were scientists, medical professionals, veterinary professionals, engineers, and other STEM leaders,' reads a Wednesday post on AFGE Local 2883's website. 'These cuts were scientific, not administrative and not 'fraud, waste, and abuse.''
Their website offers lots of data related to HHS cuts, including on personnel cuts at CDC. One chart, for example, offers a rough estimate on the number of health scientists who have been fired as of mid-March: 605.
Alsobrooks said she hopes that any fired federal scientists who heard Kennedy's claims know that she and other senators see through his nonsense and plan to keep highlighting the damage he's causing.
'We know the truth,' she said. 'That's what these hearings are about, exposing these mistruths and letting the public understand the consequences of the disastrous decisions and dangerous decisions made by Secretary Kennedy. And we're going to continue to do that.'
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