Nowhere is #NeverForget honored more in name and less in practice than in Washington, among the politicians and appointees who run it. Some will tell you our elected officials only remember 9/11 the first week of September, or when they're running for office.
After more than 20 years of advocacy on behalf of the 9/11 community, advocacy that helped pass nearly 20 pieces of federal legislation, I can tell you that's not quite true. What would actually help the 9/11 community is if the politicians and appointees who use #NeverForget as a slogan would #PleaseForget us instead. Stop treating 9/11 responders and survivors like a political football. Stop making us fight, year after year, for health care and compensation we were promised in the aftermath
of the attacks.
#NeverForget was on full display when Congress passed the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act in December 2010, and President Barack Obama signed it into law the following January. We knew it was only a start, with time and condition limits built in, but we got to work, and over the next decade we added covered conditions and secured funding for the programs through 2090.
In 2019, after Jon Stewart publicly shamed the members of Congress blocking that funding, lawmakers passed the Never Forget the Heroes Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law that July.
Along the way, we had to fight for every inch against congressmen we can only wish had #Forgotten us entirely. We won anyway.
It shouldn't have been that hard, and in 2019 we couldn't have foreseen the battles still ahead.
One step up, two steps back. So much for #NeverForget.
Since then, #NeverForget and the benefits behind it have moved like a bad negotiation: one step up, two steps back.
Elon Musk started that pattern in December 2024, when he publicly attacked a bipartisan year-end spending bill that would have fixed World Trade Center Health Program funding, and House Republicans killed their own bill.
We spent the next 14 months fighting to get it back, until Congress finally passed the fix and President Trump signed it into law this February. We still haven't fully recovered the time and ground we lost because of Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency.
The day after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in as secretary of Health and Human Services, HHS fired thousands of probationary employees in the department, a cut that hit the already understaffed WTC Health Program hardest, wiping out 20% of its staff overnight.
In the months that followed, thousands more HHS employees were pushed out through department-wide layoffs and early-retirement buyouts – offers that many took not because they wanted to leave, but because they were afraid of who'd be fired next.
Secretary Kennedy is a case study in how #NeverForget gets ignored and, worse, exploited.
Kennedy continues a pattern of neglecting 9/11 first responders
Kennedy knew the WTC Health Program had money to run on. He slashed its staffing anyway, and on April 1, 2025, he fired the head of the program, Dr. John Howard.
Those decisions knocked the program off the foundation we'd spent two decades building, and took infrastructure and expertise we still haven't gotten back. We lost years of research that was already underway, and to this day, no one has a clear picture of what research still needs to happen.
For weeks, Howard's status was left in limbo while HHS' communications office refused to answer even basic questions about whether he had been reinstated.
#NeverForget in 2026, under Kennedy, keeps looking like intentional disrespect to a community whose needs keep growing. It wasn't until this April that Kennedy authorized the WTC Health Program to fill nearly 40 open positions, in a program fully funded under laws signed by both President Trump and President Obama.
That's not progress; rather, it’s pretending his actions somehow honor #NeverForget when they do the opposite. During his time leading HHS, Kennedy has given little support to the 9/11 community. As far as I can tell, he knows exactly what this community needs, and chooses to ignore it anyway.
The needs of the 9/11 community will be met only by the appointment of a competent, compassionate HHS secretary. You'd think competent and compassionate would be baseline requirements for the job. Clearly, they're not.
This administration has passed real legislation to support the 9/11 community, and President Trump signed it, just as he did in his first term. But Kennedy is proof that a political appointee can do more damage to this community than any elected official ever has.
Those in the 9/11 community will #NeverForget, and we will not cower or bow to anyone who aims to harm us. We showed the world that on 9/11 itself. We should not have to fight our own government to obtain, use and even expand the benefits we gave our health for in the first place.
We can only hope Secretary Kennedy follows Musk out the door soon enough. If not, we'll wait him out until he fades into not even a memory. We are the 9/11 community. We #NeverForget.
John Feal is a 9/11 responder and founder of the FealGood Foundation, which advocates for 9/11 responders and survivors.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 25 years after 9/11, RFK Jr. is failing first responders | Opinion
