NYT reported Kennedy is disengaged. Kennedy’s response seems to show NYT is right.
Anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. published a lengthy, furious social media response to a New York Times piece indicating that health department insiders believe Kennedy is not engaged with the work of his vast agency. Yet his reply appears to support the Times’ assertion.
The article, released Sunday, June 7, drew on accounts from a dozen individuals who have had direct interaction with Kennedy during his tenure as health secretary. Collectively, the sources suggest that Kennedy has limited interest in the specifics of the health department’s operations and minimal direct engagement with career staff. Kennedy skips critical, regularly scheduled meetings with agency leaders, is occasionally “checked out” during the meetings he does attend, and has been unaware of major decisions, such as the dismissal of Tracy Beth Høeg, a political appointee elevated to a top drug regulatory role at the Food and Drug Administration. In his place, Kennedy often directs people to his protective, longtime assistant, Stefanie Spear, whom colleagues say has slowed department operations and contributed to several significant leadership departures.
On Wednesday night, Kennedy responded to the report with an 871-word social media tirade targeting the reporter, veteran journalist Sheryl Gay Stolberg, and the Times. His primary argument was that much of the story could be disproven by examining his packed public schedule.
“All one needs to refute your argument is to glance at my publicly available calendar,” he wrote in his opening paragraph. In another section, he elaborated, writing, “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…”
The flaw in Kennedy’s argument is that he does not have a publicly available calendar. This journalist is unaware of any such calendar. On Thursday, journalists at Stat News reported that Kennedy’s public calendar was also news to them. Over the past year, they have repeatedly requested his calendar through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) press office and by filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
“Unwilling to talk to you”
“None of STAT’s FOIA requests have been completed, and some haven’t been acknowledged—despite HHS policy requiring a response with tracking and contact information within 10 days of submitting a request,” the journalists wrote. “That includes three STAT inquiries from September 2025. The web page previously used to track requests has been taken down.”
The outlet noted that it is not only journalists who cannot obtain information from HHS; requests from citizens and lawmakers have also gone unanswered, though a leader of Kennedy’s anti-vaccine group, Children’s Health Defense, reportedly is having his FOIA requests fulfilled, Stat noted.
Ars Technica has contacted the HHS press office for comment and for a link to the publicly available calendar. There was no immediate response. Stat reported that HHS did not respond to their comment requests in light of Kennedy’s post.
That Kennedy appears to be under the mistaken belief that his calendar is public further supports the argument that he is out of touch with the operations of his agency, backing the Times’ report that Kennedy is disengaged.
Kennedy’s lack of familiarity with his calendar’s accessibility and the absence of information from HHS are also particularly notable, given that Kennedy entered the position touting plans for “radical transparency.” In April 2025, he told reporters: “We’re restoring all the FOIA offices, and we’re going to make it much easier for people to get the information. We’re going to post as much as we can.”
But Kennedy’s social media outburst on Wednesday further underscored that Kennedy is not committed to transparency as health secretary. In it, he acknowledged that HHS is withholding information from certain journalists, effectively blacklisting them.
“[S]ince we all are aware of your predictable bias, we at HHS are unwilling to talk to you about the topics that are important,” Kennedy wrote of the Times. “The fact that you have minimal access to decision makers leaves you covering trivia and relying on your own capacity for invention.”