'We're cooked': RFK Jr.'s work disengagement alarms experts as Ebola outbreak spreads

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reportedly arrives at the Department of Health and Human Services around 10 a.m., leaves by 4 p.m., spends staff meetings scrolling on his phone, and once apologized to colleagues for his "dysfunctional self" — and that's just the management style. The vacancies are a separate problem.

A sweeping New York Times investigation published Sunday by reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg, based on accounts from a dozen people with direct contact with Kennedy, paints a portrait of a health secretary deeply disengaged from the department he runs while an Ebola outbreak spreads and critical positions sit empty.

When the World Health Organization declared the Ebola outbreak in Africa a public health emergency — with six Americans already exposed — a reporter asked Kennedy if he was worried. "Yeah, we're working on it," he said. He has made no public comments about the outbreak in the nearly three weeks since. He has received very few briefings from CDC scientists about the virus, according to the Times.

The report notes that the department's leadership vacuum is stark. There is no surgeon general. Around half of the 27 institutes and centers at the National Institutes of Health are run by acting directors. The acting chief of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases was recently fired. The FDA commissioner quit last month. The CDC director Kennedy fired last August is now run on an acting basis by Jay Bhattacharya — a health economist with no prior public health experience who simultaneously holds the enormous job of NIH director. The nation's pandemic preparedness office is run by a former Los Angeles firefighter who founded an anti-vaccine mandate group during COVID.

Kennedy didn't even know the FDA's top drug regulator had been fired until after it happened, according to three people familiar with the events.

"You would never accept a major corporation operating this way," said Michael Osterholm, 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. Here, the stakes are much higher."

The Times found that Kennedy has surrounded himself with a tight circle of loyalists, chief among them longtime adviser Stefanie Spear, through whom all decisions and meeting requests are routed. When Kennedy is asked a question, his frequent response is "just run that by Stefanie." Her control has slowed department operations, colleagues say, and fueled departures — Kennedy is on his third top spokesman and has run through two chiefs of staff.

When a gunman opened fire on CDC headquarters last August, Kennedy was fishing in Alaska. A statement to the media was held up for hours while Spear sought White House approval.

Kennedy reportedly attends a weekly Tuesday briefing with the department's 13 division chiefs about once a month. When he does show up, multiple attendees described him as "checked out" and said he spends the time scrolling on his phone.

Reactions came quickly.

Political commentator Molly Jong-Fast summarized the reaction succinctly after the piece dropped: "We're cooked, I tell you."

"RFK jr is working hard … at the gym but not at his job," she further added.

Dick Cheney's former doctor, Jonathan Reiner, chimed in, "For all intents and purposes, Chris Klomp is the Sec of HHS."