Tonight in Your Rights: RFK Jr. sued for "dismantling" U.S. healthcare
Also: New lawsuits challenge Trump's weaponization of security clearances and sanctions against the international war court
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Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. faces a federal lawsuit filed by 20 state attorneys general on Monday over his “dismantling” of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
“This administration is not streamlining the federal government; they are sabotaging it and all of us,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. “When you fire the scientists who research infectious diseases, silence the doctors who care for pregnant patients, and shut down the programs that help firefighters and miners breathe or children thrive, you are not making America healthy – you are putting countless lives at risk.”
Possible Action Item:
RFK Jr.’s actions and antivaccine views have driven many calls to Congress. Find out what some people have said to their reps about it on the 5 Calls website.
According to the lawsuit, the cuts have, among other things:
slashed the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration by half,
halted the National Survey on Drug Use and Health,
sacked the entire maternal health team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),
shut down the federal fertility tracking program,
undermined the nation’s HIV/AIDS response, and
reduced the number of doctors able to certify cancer diagnoses in the World Trade Center Health Program.
The numbers cited in the lawsuit are grim.
“Congress has passed dozens of laws for HHS to enforce and authorized HHS to spend $2.5 trillion in Fiscal Year 2024 alone because, in Congress’s judgment, the work of the Department is that critical. Over the course of a few days in late March and early April, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. […] dismantled the Department in violation of Congress’s instructions, the U.S. Constitution, and the many statutes that govern the Department’s programs and appropriate funds for it to administer.” (page 2)
“All told, 20,000 full-time employees—almost twenty-five percent of HHS headcount—would be terminated in a few months to save, by Defendants’ own estimate, less than one percent of HHS expenditures.” (page 4)
“HHS’s twenty-eight divisions would be restructured down to fifteen, including a
new Administration for a Healthy America (AHA), and centralized human resources, information technology, procurement, external affairs and policy offices.” (page 16)
Some of the DOGE-related changes are even visible on the CDC website, which says the agency stopped accepting applications for respirators.
The states call the slashing of U.S. health services unlawful and unconstitutional, violating the separation of powers, the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution, and the Administrative Procedures Act’s prohibition on arbitrary and capricious government action.
“A Weapon on a Mass Scale”
Prominent national security attorney Mark Zaid has held a security clearance for more than two decades, first at the “Secret” level and then upgraded to “Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information” level. He’s sued Democratic and Republican adminsitrations, never encountering questions with any of them about his fitness to handle the nation’s secrets.
Then, Zaid represented the whistleblower whose complaint sparked Donald Trump’s first impeachment, and he’s now fighting to get the tool of his livelihood back in a first-of-its-kind lawsuit.
Zaid has started a legal defense fund here.
“President Trump has used security clearances as a weapon on a mass scale since his January 20, 2025, inauguration to punish his perceived political enemies by handicapping their ability to engage with the government and pursue their livelihood,” the lawsuit says.
Zaid has some fresh wind in his sails from a recent ruling blocking Trump’s executive order targeting Perkins Coie. The decision also found the blanket suspension of security clearances for the firm’s attorneys unlawful.
Unlike the firms, Zaid is the first to sue for the revocation of his clearance as an individual, but he believes the same principle applies because Trump’s retaliation is against a “class of people” — here, based on perceived political views.
Zaid has some serious legal firepower by his side with lawyers Abbe Lowell and Norm Eisen.
Lowell, who represented Hunter Biden, recently started a firm dedicated to serving those targeted by Trump. Eisen served as the lead impeachment lawyer during Trump’s Ukraine scandal — and is an indefatigable force in media, legal advocacy, and civil society. (Disclosure: Eisen was my editor at Just Security’s Trump Trials Clearinghouse.)
Punished for fighting genocide in Darfur?
A decorated U.S. Army veteran who has spent the last 15 years prosecuting war crimes in Darfur has filed a lawsuit opposing the Trump administration’s sanctions against the International Criminal Court.
Eric Iverson, a U.S. Citizen, is the lead prosecutor against those accused of committing war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity in the Darfur region of Sudan. The Holocaust Museum estimates that the conflict has killed between 200,000 to 300,000 people and displaced 2.7 million more.
Now, he says his work is in doubt.
According to a lawsuit filed by Human Rights First, the Trump administration “prevented Mr. Iverson from investigating and prosecuting the mass atrocities in Darfur, because the President issued an overbroad executive order authorizing sanctions against the ICC and its Prosecutor.”
The sanctions were designed as backlash against the ICC’s decision to file war crimes charges against Israeli officials. Iverson doesn’t work on that case, but he reports to Prosecutor Karim Khan, who brought it.
In a sworn statement, Iverson wrote of Trump’s executive order: “These prohibitions create insurmountable obstacles to my ability to do my job for fear that work I do, and that I must instruct others to do, will be viewed by U.S. authorities as providing services for the benefit of Prosecutor Khan, who ultimately heads the OTP.”
Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Treasury Security Scott Bessent, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are named as defendants.
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