Senator Ed Markey, flanked by the woman who once ran the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) under President Biden, appeared together in Dorchester’s Codman Square on Friday morning to denounce the Donald Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The hour-long press conference outside of the Codman Square Health Center came one day after Kennedy came under intense questioning and withering criticism as he appeared before the Senate Finance Committee to answer for his anti-vaccine policies that critics say could upend decades of public health policies and have real-world, deadly consequences for Americans— and the world.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren was one of several Democrats who confronted Kennedy and called for him to resign.
Markey, who is running for re-election next year, joined that call on Friday, saying, “it’s lie, after lie, after lie from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The only truth we came away with is how dangerous Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is to the health of our nation and our communities,” Markey said.
He later added: “I call on every one of my Republican colleagues, join me, join my Democratic colleagues, the multitude of medical associations, health care providers, nine former CDC directors, over a thousand current and former HHS employees, and demand the resignation of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.”
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who has also run Mass General Hospital’s Infectious Diseases division and teaches at Harvard Medical School, led the CDC for two-and-a-half years as its 19th director, taking charge in Jan. 2021 at a time when, she said, 4,000 people were dying every single day in the United States from COVID-19.
Now, she lamented: “HHS leadership is inching towards a complete vaccine takedown, incrementally chiseling away at our previously trusted systems, leaving behind a shaky, fragmented vaccine facade that is increasingly obscure and untenable, and that is already limited vaccine time zone.”
Walensky slammed Kennedy for gutting the CDC of experts on immunization and “replacing them with a panel of vax skeptics and firing CDC director Susan Monarez for refusing wholesale acceptance of the new panel’s recommendations, sowing doubt and confusion into who should get vaccines.”
The upheaval caused by Kennedy’s decisions come despite what Walensky says is widespread popular support for childhood vaccines in particular.
“In today’s divided America, there is actually one consensus that remains, 92 percent of parents still vaccinate their children. Surely we can all agree we don’t want our children to die. There’s an old saying: vaccines don’t save lives, vaccinations do.”
Also on hand to speak out against Kennedy and Trump was Dave Foley, president of the SEIU Local 509 union, who claimed the assault on public health norms was part of a larger “MAGA” effort to “erode faith in every institution that they don’t control.”
Above, Dave Foley speaks at the Codman Square press conference. Cassidy McNeeley photo
“They have been trying to break down our faith in these institutions so that they can hold power through fear and through a population that is isolated,” said Foley. “We cannot continue in this way.”
Markey and other speakers cheered Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, who this week ordered her administration to stand-up its own measures to break ties with federal health guidelines and to mandate insurance coverage for vaccines. Healey has similarly denounced Kennedy and Trump for “hijacking” the CDC and installing “people who don’t believe in science and people who don’t believe in science-based health care.”
“We are grateful to Governor Healey, who has taken the approval step to protect us here in Massachusetts by requiring health insurers to cover vaccines recommended by state health officials, regardless of what the CDC recommends,” said Markey. “But the American people deserve clarity, accountability, and rapid corrective action to restore vaccine access. They deserve a top health official who believes in science, who can be certain to make decisions to protect the health of every family in our state, and across our nation.”
Marybeth Miotto, a pediatrician at Mattapan Community Health Center who has led the state chapter of the American Academy for Pediatrics, said commitment to child health is “not a partisan issue.”
“Prior to 2025, Republican and Democratic administrations supported child health through widespread immunization efforts,” she said. So early this year, pediatricians looked forward to working with the Department of Health and Human Services to tackle all threats. Unfortunately, a series of unfortunate events have put American children at risk. These include what you’ve heard before: The late May changes to child and maternal Vaccine recommendations without any new evidence, the abruption replacement of well-vetted panelists on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, with many individuals lacking any relevant vaccine or infectious disease.”
She added: “We’re disappointed that our federal partners are no longer helping us keep these children safe from life-threatening infections, but we are in it for the children.”
The symbolism of the Codman Square location was not lost on several longtime observers from Dorchester, who recalled that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s family have deep personal and political roots in the neighborhood, which was once dubbed “Kennedy Country.”
The late Sen. Ted Kennedy, who championed community health centers and universal health coverage among other liberal policies, was a frequent visitor to the health center during his career. Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, the matriarch of the Kennedy clan and grandmother to RFK, Jr., was raised in a home on nearby Welles Avenue and attended high school across the street from the scene of Friday’s press conference. The presidential library named for the late president John F. Kennedy stands roughly 2.5 miles from the scene of today’s events.
On Friday, one of Ted Kennedy’s successors in the Senate lambasted his nephew.
“In 1900, in the United States, 18 percent of all children died before the age of five,” Sen. Markey said. “Life expectancy in the United States in the 1900s was 48 years of age. What changed? Vaccines changed. All the other public health interventions that we’ve built into our system changed. We’ve added 30 bonus years of life to Americans. That’s what’s changed.”
“Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. isn’t selling a Make America healthy again agenda. It’s a Make America sick again agenda that Robert Kennedy is selling to the American people, and we have to stop it.”
In response to press questions, Sen. Markey panned the Trump administration’s lawsuit targeting Boston and Mayor Wu for its law enforcement policies related to immigrants.
“Mayor Wu is doing a great job protecting the city, we have the lowest crime rate in the United States of America,” said Markey. “ICE and Trump could get lessons from Wu and the Boston Police Department.”
“It’s trying to turn this into an issue where he is scaring white suburban voters across the country about Black and Brown citizens in our nation,” Markey said. “It’s all part of the MAGA playbook to make America greater again by making America hate again.”
Reporter editor Bill Forry contributed to this report.
