“I want to announce to my friends and colleagues that last Friday I announced my resignation effective immediately,” he wrote in a post to his LinkedIn page. “To my colleagues at HHS, I wish you the best and great success.”
The top spokesperson at the Health and Human Services Department has abruptly quit after clashing with Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his close aides over their management of the agency amid a growing measles outbreak, two people familiar with the matter told POLITICO.
Thomas Corry announced on Monday that he had resigned “effective immediately,” just two weeks after joining the department as its assistant secretary for public affairs.
The sudden departure was prompted by growing disagreement with Kennedy and his principal deputy chief of staff, Stefanie Spear, over their management of the health department, said the two people, who were granted anonymity to speak candidly.
Corry had also grown uneasy with Kennedy’s muted response to the intensifying outbreak of measles in Texas, the people said. The outbreak has infected at least 146 people and resulted in the nation’s first death from the disease in a decade.
A longtime vaccine skeptic, Kennedy, during a Cabinet meeting last week, said measles outbreaks are “not unusual.” However, measles was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Kennedy has since emphasized that HHS is aiding Texas health officials with their measles response, but declined so far to explicitly call for people to get vaccinated.