00:00Thank you so much. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I am pleased to join Protect Our Care and 314 Action and all my colleagues this morning to say enough is enough. RFK Jr. has got to go.
00:16Look, some of the problems that RFK Jr. is diagnosing are right. Americans absolutely should have the opportunity to live healthier lives. And my career in public service was and is, in fact, inspired by that very idea.
00:34But RFK Jr.'s supposed solutions are not only wrong, they are downright dangerous. You don't find cures to diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's by firing scientists doing that very research.
00:50You don't restore trust in vaccines by spreading outright lies about their safety and efficacy. You don't keep Americans healthy by mass firings of the people who protect us from disease outbreaks.
01:06But that is just what he has done. He's greenlit mass firings at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes for Health.
01:22RFK Jr. has canceled or delayed funding that Congress has approved for biomedical research into cancers, ALS, Alzheimer's disease, and more.
01:35In fact, the NIH has awarded $5 billion less. That's $5 billion less to U.S. institutions for research compared to last year.
01:48And most recently, and perhaps most predictably, we've seen RFK Jr. take extraordinary measures to insert his personal politics in the place of science at the Centers for Disease Control.
02:05These actions have very real consequences.
02:08When you fire people at the CDC, there's no one there to help communities deal with public health emergencies like lead poisoning.
02:17And I should know, because that's the exact situation that happened in Wisconsin, when children in Milwaukee public schools were exposed to lead paint in classrooms, and no one was there at the CDC to answer the phone.
02:32Americans should be able to trust that the information coming from the health department is rooted in what is best for their families, and not based on the unsupported theories of RFK Jr., who has spent his career peddling misinformation.
02:51One thing is clear.
02:52One thing is clear.
02:53It is not a matter of politics anymore.
02:56It's a matter of public health.
02:58And I'm calling on RFK Jr. to resign immediately.
03:03I'd personally be happy to help him pack up his desk, right?
03:11As I'm sure any one of the thousands of hardworking civil servants that he has fired would also.
03:19We'll keep showing up and holding Donald Trump, RFK Jr., and congressional Republicans accountable for terminating Americans' health care and endangering Americans' lives.
03:33I hope that my Republican colleagues, especially those who actually believe that RFK Jr. would follow the science, admit they were wrong, and join us to protect our constituents.
03:48I thank you again for being here.
03:52And now I turn it over to my colleague, Angela Ulsterbrooks.
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