Rep. Elise Stefanik has fired off a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., demanding a federal probe into the New York City Department of Health — after staffers allegedly used taxpayer resources to build an ideological working group that accused Israel of genocide.

The letter, dated Feb. 10, asks Kennedy and the HHS inspector general to investigate whether federally funded staff time, equipment, or facilities at the department's Long Island City, Queens headquarters were marshaled to organize the so-called "Global Oppression and Public Health Working Group."

As reported by the NY Post, the group held its first meeting during the middle of the workday, and a presenter read from its mission statement with this summary of its purpose:

"We really developed in response to the ongoing genocide in Palestine."

That's not public health. That's political activism — conducted on the clock, in a government building, with resources drawn from an agency that exists to keep New Yorkers healthy.

What Stefanik wants answered

The letter doesn't settle for outrage. It lays out three specific requests aimed at determining whether civil rights law was violated and who authorized the activity:

• A formal investigation into whether federally funded resources — staff time, equipment, or facilities — were used to organize, host, or promote the working group meeting.
• A determination of whether the DOH violated Title VI, the civil rights law barring discrimination by federally funded agencies, including whether the activity created a hostile environment for Jewish employees or the public.
• An assessment of whether DOH leadership or external political officials — including the mayor's office — reviewed or approved the activity, and whether proper grant administration and internal controls were followed.

Stefanik framed the stakes plainly:

"The use of federal funds to support or tolerate government-sponsored activities that veer into ideological advocacy or that risk emboldening hate is a grave matter with civil rights and public safety implications."

She added:

"Jewish Americans and all faith communities deserve protection against discrimination, including from actions carried out in the name of public health."

That last clause matters. "In the name of public health" has become a favorite disguise for every ideological project that can't survive scrutiny on its own terms. COVID taught us how elastic that phrase could become. Now it stretches to cover Middle Eastern geopolitics in a Queens office building.

The silence from City Hall

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Department of Health have repeatedly declined to comment on the controversy. As of Thursday, City Hall and the health department offered no immediate response to Stefanik's call for a federal probe.

Acting Health Commissioner Dr. Michelle Morse — who also serves as the department's chief medical officer — declined to comment when confronted by a Post reporter following a press conference Wednesday on overdose prevention. She referred the reporter to her spokesperson.

The refusal to engage is itself a statement. When public officials use public money for a public meeting advancing a political position, the public deserves an answer. The silence from Mamdani's administration suggests they know exactly how this looks — and have no defense that wouldn't make it look worse.

One month in, and the pattern is already clear

This is happening just one month into Mamdani's mayoralty. The Post exclusively revealed the existence of the working group and video of the meeting last week, and the fallout has been swift. The controversy sparked blowback from City Council Speaker Julie Menin. House Speaker Mike Johnson weighed in on X:

"Instead of trying to force a radical-left foreign policy agenda, the bureaucrats in Zohran Mamdani's Department of Health should focus on delivering the services New Yorkers pay for with their tax dollars."

Johnson's point is the obvious one, but it bears repeating because New York's political class seems to have forgotten it: city health departments exist to address disease, sanitation, overdoses, and public safety — not to adjudicate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during business hours.

Meanwhile, antisemitic hate crimes surged 182% in New York City in January compared to a year ago. That is the environment in which city employees decided the most productive use of their time was building a working group premised on the accusation that a U.S. ally is committing genocide. The timing alone should disqualify every official who signed off on this from claiming they care about the safety of Jewish New Yorkers.

The real question is authorization

Stefanik's third request — whether the mayor's office reviewed or approved the activity — is the one that should make Mamdani's team most uncomfortable. Either the mayor's office knew about this and permitted it, which makes it a policy choice, or the mayor's office didn't know, which means city employees are freelancing ideological projects on taxpayer time with zero oversight.

And this is where Title VI becomes more than a legal citation. Federally funded agencies are prohibited from creating hostile environments based on race, ethnicity, or national origin. When a government working group adopts as its founding premise that Israel is committing genocide — language that tracks almost perfectly with the rhetoric fueling antisemitic incidents across the country — the civil rights implications aren't hypothetical. They're measurable. They're walking the streets of New York at a rate 182% higher than last year.

What happens next

Kennedy and the HHS inspector general now have a formal request on their desk with specific, actionable demands. No response has been publicly acknowledged yet. But the federal government under the current administration has shown no appetite for tolerating the misuse of federal funds to advance ideological projects — particularly ones that target a U.S. ally and endanger an American community already under siege.

Mamdani can keep declining to comment. But federal investigators don't need a mayor's permission to audit how federal dollars were spent in his city's buildings, on his city's time, by his city's employees.

New Yorkers are paying for a health department. They're getting a political action committee.