Finally: Rep. Haley Stevens Files Articles Of Impeachment For RFK Jr.
from the on-the-record dept
We’ve obviously done a ton of coverage on RFK Jr. as the head of Health and Human Services because, well, he’s an unmitigated disaster. Between all the chaos he’s created with his hiring/firing practices at HHS and its child agencies, the mass exodus of talent from those agencies, and all the anti-vaxx bullshit he’s pulled with ACIP, the CDC, and agency websites, he’s a damned problem and not nearly enough of our Congress people seem willing to do anything about it. And that’s not even getting into the ongoing measles and pertussis outbreaks that are occurring in several states as we speak.
In many of our posts on Kennedy, we have begged for someone to do something about all of this. One of those possible things that could be done is to at least try to impeach this brain-wormed assclown. And now, finally, someone did. Rep. Haley Stevens of Mighigan introduced articles of impeachment this week.
“RFK Jr. has got to go. Today, I introduced articles of impeachment to remove him from office. RFK Jr. has turned his back on science and public health and on the American people,” Stevens said in a video statement released on the social platform X. “Under his watch, families are less safe, health care costs are skyrocketing, and lifesaving research — including right here in Michigan — is being gutted,” she said in the video.
“I cannot and I will not stand by while one man dismantles decades of medical progress,” she continued. “Enough is enough, and that is why I’m pushing to impeach RFK Jr., to hold him accountable and to protect the health, safety and future of every Michigander because our health, our science and our future are worth fighting for.”
Now, let me prepare you for what you’re about to hear. Stevens, as mentioned, is campaigning for a Senate seat in her state. Thus far, polling suggests it’s not going all that well, with Stevens trailing Republican Mike Rogers by several points, though she has been closing the gap recently. What you’re going to hear about this, from Republicans and some Democrats, is that this impeachment effort is a stunt to raise Stevens’ profile in the race to get more name recognition and build turnout among Democrats.
Let me make this as clear as I possibly can: even if that is true, I don’t fucking care. If that’s what it takes to at least attempt to oust Kennedy from his role, so be it. But I also do not think that is what Stevens is doing, given her larger track record on Kennedy.
Stevens has repeatedly called for Kennedy’s removal from his role since he became HHS secretary and said in September she intended to file impeachment articles against him over the “heath care chaos” under his watch. The measure is not likely to pass in a Republicans-controlled Congress.
We’ll just have to see about that last bit. It’s probably correct that Republicans won’t go against Dear Leader and do the right thing, but they should be put on the record as such. Vote against impeachment if you wish. Make yourself a responsible party to all of the horrors Kennedy has, is, and will visit upon Americans’ health. The deaths from measles. The Hep B infections in newborns, along with the long-tail health effects of those infections, including deaths. Declining vaccination rates due to the misinformation vomited from Kennedy and his hand-picked cadre of cronies. A vote against impeaching Kennedy will serve as cosigning all of the above. All of it.
Bill Cassidy could certainly help here, if he wants to stop being a partisan for ten minutes and put his doctor’s coat back on. Cassidy was a crucial vote in Kennedy’s confirmation to HHS, as well as being something of a silent whip for other Republican votes that were unsure on voting for Kennedy’s confirmation. He can likewise now serve the opposite purpose. He can come out in favor of Stevens’ articles of impeachment, whip Republican votes for it, and begin to undo the harm that he helped create through the confirmation process. He’s spilled plenty of words worrying out loud about what Kennedy is doing. Now let him back it up.
Either way, get everyone on the record. Are you okay with Kennedy’s dismantling of decades of progress made on various matters of health, or are you not? That is what an impeachment vote would be asking.
Filed Under: haley stevens, health and human services, impeachment, rfk jr.
Comments on “Finally: Rep. Haley Stevens Files Articles Of Impeachment For RFK Jr.”
Why does that matter? They don’t remotely care about being on record. Anything Dear Leader wants, they give.
Do the voters who vote these people in every time care? If they did, Republicans would never hold elected office again.
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That is ultimately what democracy is about: (a certain majority of) people get what they deserve. The clearer it is what they are voting for, the more they deserve what they are getting.
So yes, establishing a record is important. Also for future generations, when everybody wants to claim to have been a victim and/or member of the resistance.
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Their base won’t care, but there is a significant squishy middle that can be persuaded. The GOP needs them, it can’t win with the base alone. That squishy middle is just… kind of insane. It’s not that they don’t care about things, but rather they don’t follow politics closely, don’t think things through (including having incoherent/contradictory beliefs), have the memory of gold fish, are easily distracted, etc.
Sometimes you have to dangle the really obvious thing in front of them for them to get it, and even that may be only partially effective. Especially against a hostile media. But to the extent that you can break through, something high stakes with extended drama/spectacle/narrative and clear lines, can work.
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No, swing voters are a tiny minority and Democrats’ fixation on trying to win Republican votes is deeply misguided.
The way to win elections isn’t to swing the squishy middle, it’s to turn out the base. Trump didn’t win in 2024 because Biden voters became Trump voters, he won because Biden voters stayed home.
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I was focusing on the middle because of the way the question is framed (although to be fair, having it on record probably helps base turn out as well). You’re right that if you have to pick one, turning out the base is better.
But margins are close enough that it’s worth grabbing swing voters when you can. The caveat is “when you can”. When it becomes a problem is when you start sacrificing your base to win swing voters. If you can get both (like here), it’s a win/win, or if it depresses your opponent’s base at the margins, win/win/win. Or at least, if you can improve one without hurting the others. Where it becomes a problem is when you alienate your (much larger) base to cater to that small insane minority.
According to Pew, ~5% of Biden2020 voters went Trump. 15% of Biden2020 didn’t show up at all. 15% is bigger than 5%, if you have to choose one, but if you can get that 5% without sacrificing part of that 15%, it’s not a negligible chunk when margins are so close. Ideally, you try to get both.
Winning that 5% alone would’ve given Harris the popular vote (not sure about electoral college offhand, depends where those voters were located), and that’s not counting the higher turnout, new/previous nonvoters, or the 11% of Trump2020 voters that stayed home in 2024.
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To detail things further:
The GOP is on the cusp of making the political middle irrelevant precisely because it is poorly informed, due to poor luck, statistical political schizophrenia (they might agree with the Democrats on 90 percent but vote for the Republicans on a shiny 10 percent issue and then immediately regret it as a non-voter and then their learning moment becomes a trauma, e.g. november 4th 2024 and the events since) and right wing wealthy elite intentionally trying to misinform them by convincing them that being wealthy means they must be smarter than the rest of the populace in some way.
The not so amusing part of this brinksmanship is the closer the GOP gets to getting what it wants, the closer it gets to an all or nothing election with which it either wins and gets everything it wanted while throwing under the bus its useful idiot no-longer-relevant voting coalitions shortly thereafter, or loses and loses 90% of everything it has worked for since Nixon and Reagan, the inception of the Heritage Foundation, Federalist Society and Fox News. Primarily due to a rule of law they broke that refuses to recognize their sophistry and victimhood in due process.
The GOP is ‘winning’ in ways they can’t permanently solidify the advantages while engaging in a circular firing squad behind the scenes and during gerrymandering. Basically if they fuck up and squander the second Trump presidency it’s very likely the populist democratic socialist left will campaign on afffordability to the center then sweep the republcian party out of power permanently on domestic terrorism charges (bipartisan comity and due process isn’t a luxury when people are being killed and deported)
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One day, Dear Leader will be gone.
One day, everbody will always have been against this. (Including most of his current base, because morals are often pretty flexible.)
That is when you will need a record. To point out the spineless cowards, the profiteers, and the sociopaths.
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If we assume no one will ever change their vote, abandon democracy. It can not work.
IN the real world, what we saw with elections this year is a lot of voters that were thought to be solid GOP flip toward the Democrats. This is the crowd the parties actually fight over. Whether they be a rotating crop of voters that vote consistently but only vote occationally, or voters flipping parties based on vibes, the premise of your claim is contradicted by elections less than 60 days old.
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And if you believe polling is a legit peek into the future rather than an estimated guess, the Latino vote that Trump carried in 2024 seems to have soured on him over the past year. That would make them a viable demographic for Democrats to carry in both the midterms and 2028…if most of the Dems weren’t such gutless cowards, anyway.
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And, y’know, in the Miami mayoral election three days ago.
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Because there’s an election in November and Trump’s net approval is at Nixon levels. Do you need me to draw you a diagram?
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Wherher they care is largely irrelevant?
Not only do I not care, this is a good thing and is how representative politics is supposed to work. Doing good things that voters want to raise your profile is literally how politics is supposed to align incentives!
Hopefully it pays off, both because she deserves it and as a reminder to others that actually doing your job comes with benefits. The most remarkable thing has been Dems complete lack of self interest in the face of their constituents begging them to use the limited tools they have.
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It won’t pass since Reps are covering each others, no one will admit a single error, even any very obvious one. And they’re not more courageous than Dems.
Just as Trump “has never and will never break any law”, Reps won’t care what’s the reality is about, only the Great One could tell them His favorite one.
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It won’t pass, which is what I was getting at with “limited tools”. But it doesn’t need to for the things mentioned above to be true- Rep Stevens can still reap the benefits of voters liking her more for signalling wanting to do the right thing if she could.
It’s not as good as actually passing (that gets more attention, and it shows more sincerity), but signalling is really all you can do as the minority party. The louder and clearer the message, the better.
If that's what it takes
What you’re going to hear about this, from Republicans and some Democrats, is that this impeachment effort is a stunt to raise Stevens’ profile in the race to get more name recognition and build turnout among Democrats.
Even if that were true and a bad motivation it would still be more damning for the other politicians, republican and democrat, who haven’t even done that much to try to oust Kennedy.
If what’s needed for a politician to do something that should have been done months ago is self-interest and trying to keep in office then so be it, at least they’re trying which is more than can be said of those around them.
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Uh, isn’t that the whole point of elected representatives? If we wanted to believe in inherent goodness, there’d be simpler and more effective forms of government.
Both current-day capitalism and democracy work on the assumption that a misalignment of self-interest and public interest makes for an overoptimistic fit with human nature.
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And I think that was the parent commenter’s point. If we’re voting for someone because they’re doing what needs to be done… that actually seems like a really good reason.
I want to believe
Here’s hoping it gets the numbers, but given absolutely fuck-all has been done thus far, despite a mounting death toll and reports of preventable-disease outbreaks not seen for decades, I can’t see many suits caring much more today than they did yesterday, or last week.
I predict it’ll take said politicians seeing their own children in iron lungs, or dying of encephalitis or something, before the gravity of the shituation dawns on them.
Even if the CDC suddenly reverted to doing its job tomorrow, fully staffed and showered in budget, the true consequences of that monster’s actions are still going to keep developing for years, regardless. The drops in vaccination rates alone are a huge problem, and one that hasn’t even ‘peaked’ in terms of its effects yet, at that. Unless vaccination rates magically turn around again in a real hurry, but I don’t see that happening for a while, either.
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In a slight bit of fairness (which is the only amount I’m willing to give RFK Jr. in this situation), anti-vax bullshit would still be going even if the CDC reverted entirely to its pre-RFK state, including its vaccine recommendations and such. The right-wing mediasphere pushes its audience deeper and faster into conspiracy fantasies, with anti-vax fantasies being second only to transphobic fantasies. (Then again, a lot of conspiracy fantasy bullshit these days starts with transphobia and spreads from there. Once someone goes down that rabbit hole, they don’t come back up normal.)
Point is: The CDC isn’t the issue per se, so much as it’s the anti-vax rhetoric of people like RFK Jr. that’s fucking up vaccination rates. That RFK Jr. is in the position of power he’s in right now doesn’t help, but even if he left his position today, that wouldn’t magically fix anything in re: vaccinations. Until you get to the root of anti-vax bullshit—which mainly started with the discredited Wakefield study and the whole “I’d rather my child be dead than autistic” mindset started by said study—Jesus Christ could run the CDC and you’d still have a bunch of people “just asking questions” about vaccines.
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And while bothsidesing is usually bullshit, the anti-vaxx movement has historically had support on the far left, not just the far right. (Don’t forget that RFK Jr. has been a Democrat for most of his life.) You see all sorts of medical woo among hippie/new agey types: healing crystals, homeopathy, raw milk, etc.
(It’s not that there’s no truth to any “alternative medicine” — things like yoga, meditation, and herbal remedies have their place — but as with anything it’s important to separate scientific evidence from feelings.)
Ironically, in the hyperpartisan age we live in, people on the left are actually less likely to oppose vaccines now that that’s associated with Trump.
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It totally weirded me out when RWNJs took on the trappings/identity of the center-to-left woowoonauts with crystals and all. There was always some crossover, but they seemed to have distinct ways of being divorced from reality in the past. Crystals v magnets. Mother Earth v industrial bleach colonics and drinks. Not as much separation any more.
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The problem with waiting for the politicals/for the elite to suffer from what they are doing is that they are hypocrites in most cases.
Complaining about vaccines but still getting them, complaining about abortions but still sending their teen daughter to a ‘summer camp’ in a blue state suddenly so she can ‘lose some weight’.
It’s not like times past where specter of polio stalked wealthy and poor both and fighting against finding a cure was arguably condemning your own or starting a war meant your own offspring could be called up.
Maybe it's time to ostracise them further...
When I hear all of this anti-vax horseshit that brainworm-riddled RFK Jr. shits out of his headhole, I’m reminded of COVID-19, and in a bit of a nostalgic way.
I remember when the mouth-breathers were all about spreading it so they can achieve ‘herd immunity.’ We know how that worked out – all those ‘patriots’ who ended up running to hospitals for what they called ‘a hoax of a virus’, taking up ventilators that they didn’t deserve.
They didn’t learn watching their parents/grandparents/friends die from their delusion that a virus gives a fucking shit about what trump’s got going on in that empty head of his. Maybe watching their newborn to 5 yo children dying or ending up with life-altering conseuences will change their minds. Let’s see how they feel about pneumonia and encephilitis when it’s their toddler.
I’m all outta fucks for these people. Sometimes when the captain of a boat is cocksure that there isn’t a leak, you gotta let that ship sink a bit, and lock the captain inside so he realizes how stupid he was.
Re: The true tragedy of the pro-plague position is that it kills the wrong people
Maybe watching their newborn to 5 yo children dying or ending up with life-altering conseuences will change their minds. Let’s see how they feel about pneumonia and encephilitis when it’s their toddler.
If the only ones suffering in that example were the pro-plague parent(s) then I’d be all on board with that idea and be cheering right along with you, the problem is that for them to learn their kids, who didn’t have anything to do with their idiocy, are the ones who are suffering and dying and that I cannot support or cheer on.
An adult pro-plaguer ends up maimed of dead because they refused to get vaccinated? I’ll be laughing my ass off all day long at their well-earned Darwin Award.
A pro-plaguer’s kid is hospitalized and doctors are desperately trying to keep them alive or sadly informing their pro-plague parent of their death that the parent caused? I’m not going to feel an ounce of sympathy for their mental anguish, but I’m not going to be happy or even satisfied of what just happened either even if it does get them to pull their head out of their ass as a result.
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the problem is that for them to learn their kids, who didn’t have anything to do with their idiocy, are the ones who are suffering and dying
I agree – the kids are innocent in all of this. However, so are any other casualties caused by this misguided stupidity. There becomes a point where, for the better of the rest of us innocents, that these people and their spawn should be isolated, ostracised, or otherwise left to fraternize with like-minded simpletons, protecting the rest of us.
I just want them to work out their ‘herd-immunity’ bullshit among themselves for a change. If they want to play scientist, it would be common courtesy for them to contain their experiment to them, their kids, and any other stupids who want to play chicken with diseases.