Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on June 10 that he works long hours and makes final decisions for issues across divisions he oversees.
“I am knowledgeable and active on every issue in every division of my department, and I always make the final decisions,” Kennedy wrote in a post on X.
Kennedy heads the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees divisions such as the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“I meet with the principals at FDA, NIH, CDC, and my senior counselor every morning, something, I’m told, is unprecedented in HHS history,” Kennedy said. “I try to get out of the office between 4:30 and 6:00 PM, so that I can spend three hours, in quiet, responding to emails. I normally work until 11 PM every night, mostly on phone calls to staff.”
Kennedy was responding to a New York Times report that alleged he appeared disengaged beyond his core priorities, said to include changes to vaccine guidance, updating food-related recommendations, and limiting pesticide exposure.
It drew criticism from some health professionals and Democrats.
“In the midst of an Ebola outbreak: we have no confirmed CDC Director, Surgeon General, or FDA Commissioner. Half of NIH’s Institutes & Centers lack permanent leadership,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) wrote on X. “Meanwhile, RFK Jr. is leaving work at 4pm & spouting conspiracy theories. This is public health under Trump.”
The report cited anonymous sources, described as people who have had contact with Kennedy while he has been secretary, as well as other employees within HHS.
Kennedy said on X that among the people cited, some were fired and others quit to avoid being fired.
HHS fired about 20,000 workers in 2025, part of mass terminations across the government, although Kennedy said in the spring that the agency has since hired 10,000 new employees and plans to bring on about 12,000 more.
“You fault me for missing a couple of monthly counselor meetings,” Kennedy wrote. “However, I meet one-on-one with my counselors every day to decide policy and strategy. We schedule the monthly meetings to give the divisions a chance to keep each other informed about HHS-wide policies with which I’m already intimately familiar. Had you read my calendar, you would have seen that I have back-to-back meetings all day, every day, with both career and political staff, with my counselors and with outside stakeholders, interspersed with press conferences and other policy announcements.”
Kennedy said that reforms he’s enacted include transforming the Indian Health Service, locating unaccompanied illegal immigrant children inside the country, and ending widespread work by HHS employees from home.
He also said that, unlike some previous officials, who primarily spent their tenures at home in other parts of the country, he has devoted most of his time to Washington and has been home to California only once in the 15 months he has been in office.