In the wake of the latest scandal he has perpetuated, National Nurses United, the nation’s largest nurses union and professional organization, today called for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, to be fired by President Donald Trump or to resign.

“Secretary Kennedy’s seven-month tenure at our nation’s highest public health agency has been characterized by one disaster after another, and it has dangerously eroded public trust in the institutions that are so critical for the health and safety of all Americans. It is time for him to go,” said NNU President Mary Turner, RN.

After months of encouraging the displacement of thousands of essential federal health agency workers, massive cuts in essential programs that once made the U.S. a global leader in development of health research, and, especially, promotion of unfounded conspiracy theories about the safety of vaccines that save countless lives, Kennedy’s failures boiled over this week.

On Monday, Kennedy demanded Susan Monarez, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) either resign or be fired. That was followed today when federal guards escorted three top CDC officials from the agency’s Atlanta headquarters.

What the New York Times called the “chaos” at the CDC followed what NNU calls “a disastrous and extremely dangerous decision” by the Federal Drug Administration, which is under the HHS umbrella, to limit updated Covid-19 vaccinations to people at risk for serious complications because they are 65 or older or have other health problems.

More than 1.2 million Americans have already died from Covid-19, and the death toll would be far, far greater if the vital Covid-19 vaccine had not likely saved tens of thousands of lives of people of all ages, notes NNU.

“This decision alone, which symbolizes Secretary Kennedy’s hostility to life saving vaccines, that was also evident in the fatal measles outbreak earlier this year, is not only a major risk with the ongoing threat of Covid and further mutations of the virus, it symbolizes why his continued leadership of our public health programs must be ended,” said Turner.

Multiple U.S. scientific experts and medical practitioners have also sounded repeated alarm over Kennedy’s stewardship.

“As bad as things have been since January, the firing of thousands of federal health workers, extreme budget cuts, the ongoing assault on our nation’s vaccination system, what we saw yesterday was another level entirely — an extraordinary and systematic dismantling of the very top of our nation’s public health system,” said Dr. Richard Besser, a former acting director of the agency, as the New York Times reported Thursday.

Monarez attorneys who have said she will fight her firing explained, “when CDC Director Susan Monarez refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts, she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda. For that reason, she has been targeted.”

And in his resignation letter, Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, one of the top CDC staff who was pushed out of the CDC headquarters today, wrote, “I am not able to serve in this role any longer because of the ongoing weaponizing of public health.”

This week’s actions are the latest in a pattern showing Secretary Kennedy’s disregard for science, public health, and the federal workers who keep this country safe from multiple health threats. He has maligned federal health workers, tried to strip HHS workers of their collective bargaining rights, fired experts from CDC’s vaccine advisory committee and replaced them with vaccine critics, cancelled millions of dollars in research into mRNA vaccines, spread lies about vaccines, and limited public engagement in HHS rule-making.

National Nurses United is the largest and fastest-growing union and professional association of registered nurses in the United States with more than 225,000 members nationwide. NNU affiliates include California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, DC Nurses Association, Michigan Nurses Association, Minnesota Nurses Association, and New York State Nurses Association.