RFK Jr’s testimony: top takeaways
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.’s testimony before the senate finance committee displayed some cracks in the administration’s armor, as a few Republicans joined Democrats with pointed questions about his posture toward vaccines – particularly the COVID-19 vaccine – and the firing of former CDC director Susan Monarez.
Kennedy spread vaccine misinformation during his testimony. He argued in defense of a statement made by Dr. Retsef Levi, a new appointee to a key vaccine panel, that mRNA vaccines present a risk of “serious harm, including death, especially among young people.” The scientific consensus today is that mRNA vaccines – including the Covid vaccine – only rarely have side effects and are both effective and safe.
Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) with a call to put Kennedy under oath, describing his testimony during his confirmation hearing as a lie.
Monarez told the Wall Street Journal that she was asked to pre-approve vaccine recommendations made by a panel now composed entirely of Kennedy allies, some of whom have openly argued against vaccination, after the secretary purged it of its previous expertise, and that her refusal led to her ouster. Kennedy repeatedly called that accusation a lie.
“I told her that she had to resign because I asked her, ‘Are you a trustworthy person?’ And she said, ‘no’.”
Wyden and several other Democrats called on Kennedy to resign, and for President Donald Trump to fire him if he wouldn’t quit.
Highlights:
“These changes were absolutely necessary adjustments to restore the agency to its role as the world’s gold standard public health agency with the central mission of protecting Americans from infectious disease.” The CDC “failed [its] responsibility miserably during Covid when its disastrous, nonsensical policies destroyed small businesses, violated civil liberties, closed our schools and caused generational damage in doing so, masked infants with no science and heightened economic inequality,” Kennedy testified. The “unscientific interventions failed to do anything about the disease itself.”
“Kennedy: “We literally did worse than any country in the world,” in preventing COVID-19 deaths “and the people at CDC who oversaw that process, who put masks on our children, who closed our schools, are the people who will be leaving.”
Kennedy: “It’s chronic disease that’s bankrupting us and destroying our national security.”
Key events
Lauren Gambino
Hawaii announced today that it would join a new public health alliance formed by a trio of west coast states in response to the turmoil at the CDC.
On Wednesday, the California governor Gavin Newsom announced that his state had partnered with Washington and Oregon to form the West Coast Health Alliance, which they said would provide residents with science-based immunization guidance as the nation’s top public health agency – and a slew of red states – roll back long-standing recommendations medical experts and researchers have credited with limiting the spread of infectious diseases.
“By joining the West Coast Health Alliance, we’re giving Hawaii’s people the same consistent, evidence-based guidance they can trust to keep their families and neighbors safe,”Josh Green, theDemocratic governor of Hawaii, said in a statement.
Green, an emergency room physician, said a science-driven approach was “critical as we all go forward into an era with severe threats from infectious diseases”.
The Democratic governors of California, Oregon and Washington unveiled the new alliance on the same day that Florida’s Republican surgeon general said the state would end all vaccine mandates for schoolchildren.
Justice department opens criminal mortgage fraud probe into Fed governor Cook – report
The justice department has launched a criminal mortgage fraud probe into Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook and issued grand jury subpoenas out of both Georgia and Michigan, according to documents seen by Reuters and a source familiar with the matter.
The investigation, which followed a criminal referral from Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte, is being conducted by Ed Martin, who was tapped by attorney general Pam Bondi as a special assistant US attorney to assist with mortgage fraud investigations involving public officials, along with the US attorneys’ offices in the northern district of Georgia and the eastern district of Michigan, according to the person, who spoke anonymously since the matter is not public.
Pulte, who was appointed by Trump, has accused Cook of committing fraud by listing more than one property as a primary residence when she applied for mortgages, potentially to secure lower interest rates. Cook owns properties in Michigan, Georgia and Massachusetts.
Trump terminated Cook over Pulte’s allegations, prompting her to file a lawsuit challenging his effort to oust her.
Cook’s lawyer, prominent Washington attorney Abbe Lowell, said the DOJ was scrambling to invent new justifications for Trump’s overreach in firing the Fed governor.
“He wants cover, and they are providing it. The questions over how Governor Cook described her properties from time to time, which we have started to address in the pending case and will continue to do so, are not fraud, but it takes nothing for this DOJ to undertake a new politicized investigation, and they appear to have just done it again,” Lowell said.
The case, which will likely end up before the supreme court, has ramifications for the Fed’s ability to set interest rate policy without regard to politicians’ wishes, widely seen as critical to any central bank’s ability to keep inflation under control.
Trump has demanded that the US central bank cut rates immediately and aggressively, berating Fed chair Jerome Powell for his stewardship of monetary policy. The central bank is expected to deliver a rate cut at its 16-17 September meeting.
In one of her recent legal filings challenging Trump’s actions, Cook said she listed mortgages on three properties on forms submitted to the White House and Senate in the vetting process for her appointment to the Fed in 2022. Any inconsistencies were known when she was confirmed and cannot give Trump grounds to fire her now.
Cook is the third public official to be targeted in a criminal investigation over mortgage fraud allegations. Martin, who also presides over the “Weaponization Working Group” and serves as pardon attorney, is also pursuing criminal probes into Democratic senator Adam Schiff as well as New York attorney general Letitia James.
There are also grand juries convened in those two cases, which started prior to Martin’s new appointment as a special assistant US attorney, according to the source and documents seen by Reuters.
US to cut some security funds for countries bordering Russia – reports
The United States will phase out some security assistance for European countries near the border with Russia, two sources familiar with the matter have told Reuters.
The plan comes in the broader context of Donald Trump’s so-called “America First” foreign policy, in which his administration has slashed foreign aid and is pushing European countries to cover more of the cost of their own security.
The move, first reported by the Financial Times (paywall), comes as Russia’s war with Ukraine has heightened concerns in Europe about regional instability and the possibility of further aggression from Moscow. Key recipients of the funding include Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
Congress has approved funding for the assistance plan, which comes under the Department of Defense, but only through the end of September 2026. Trump’s administration has not asked that the program be extended, according to the FT report and confirmed to Reuters by one of its sources.
Asked for comment, a White House official referred to an order Trump signed shortly after beginning his second term in January.
“On day one of his second term, President Trump signed an Executive Order to reevaluate and realign United States foreign aid,” the official said.
“This action has been coordinated with European countries in line with the Executive Order and the President’s longstanding emphasis on ensuring Europe takes more responsibility for its own defense,” the official said.
Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, called the decision misguided.
“It makes no sense at all to undercut our allies’ defense readiness at the same time that we’re asking them to step up their own capabilities, and it puts American troops at risk when we slash the training of the allied soldiers they would fight alongside,” she said in a statement.
New York attorney general asks court to reinstate Trump’s massive civil fraud penalty
New York’s attorney general moved today to have the state’s highest court reinstate Donald Trump’s staggering civil fraud penalty, appealing a lower court decision that slashed the potential half-billion dollar penalty to zero, the Associated Press reports.
Attorney general Letitia James’ office filed a notice of appeal with the state’s court of appeals, seeking to reverse the mid-level appellate division’s ruling last month that the penalty violated the US constitution’s ban on excessive fines. James had previously said she would appeal.
Trump declared “TOTAL VICTORY” after the appellate division wiped away his fine, but the five-judge panel left other punishments in place and narrowly endorsed a trial court’s finding that he committed fraud by padding his wealth on financial paperwork given to banks and insurers.
The president filed his own appeal last week, asking the court of appeals to throw out those other punishments, which include a multiyear ban on him and his two eldest sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr, from holding corporate leadership positions in New York.
Those measures have been on hold during the appellate process and the appellate division judges said Trump can seek a court order to extend the pause pending further appeals.
James’ appeal is the latest twist in a lawsuit she filed against Trump in 2022, which alleged that he inflated his net worth by billions of dollars on his financial statements and habitually misled banks and others about the value of prized assets, including golf courses, hotels, Trump Tower, and his Mar-a-Lago estate.
After a trial that saw a sometimes testy Trump take the witness stand, judge Arthur Engoron ruled last year that James had proven he engaged in a yearslong conspiracy with executives at his company to deceive banks and insurers about his wealth and assets.
Engoron ordered Trump to pay $355m — payback of what the judge deemed “ill-gotten gains” from his puffed-up financial statements. That amount soared to more than $515m, including interest, by the time the appellate division ruled.
The five-judge appellate division panel was sharply divided on many issues in Trump’s appeal, but a majority said the monetary penalty was “excessive”.
“While harm certainly occurred, it was not the cataclysmic harm that can justify a nearly half billion-dollar award,” two of the judges wrote.
Tech leaders genuflected to Melania Trump and other White House officials after a midday conclave, thanking her for working to bring artificial intelligence to children nationwide. Executives joined the First Lady for the inaugural meeting of a government task force on AI education, part of Trump’s Presidential AI Challenge.
“It’s a real honor for me to be here,” said Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google and Alphabet. “You’re really inspiring young people to use technology in extraordinary ways.”
Pichai said Google is imagining a future where every student “can learn anything in the world.” He said the company was actively working to set up systems to make AI more accessible in schools around the country.
Arvind Krishna, the CEO of IBM, and Cameron Wilson, the president of Code.org, also addressed the First Lady, praising her leadership in bringing AI to children. Krishna said IBM was pledging to teach AI skills to two million workers in the US. Wilson said Code.org would “engage 25m learners” with artificial intelligence, saying it was the company’s goal to “transform our education system so students can thrive in AI”.
Pam Bondi, the attorney general, has scheduled a 3pm ET press conference in Tampa, Florida, to discuss recent justice department efforts to reduce human trafficking. She will update work done by Joint Task Force Alpha, which combats human smuggling and trafficking groups operating in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Colombia and Panama.
The taskforce was created four years ago as a combined effort from the Department of Homeland Security, the Coast Guard, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies.
A rule proposed by the Biden administration that would have entitled airline passengers to automatic compensation for delayed flights has been scrapped by the Department of Transportation.
The Biden administration proposed the rule in December, asking for public comment on a plan to require airlines to pay $200 to $300 to passengers delayed by at least three hours on domestic flights and up to $775 for longer delays.
The rule would have brought the United States to parity with European rules requiring compensation. But domestic air carriers sharply criticized the proposal.
In June, the EU relaxed its own rules, increasing the amount of time aircraft passengers are delayed before they can qualify for compensation to four hours for short-haul flights and six hours for long-haul flights.
RFK Jr’s testimony: top takeaways
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.’s testimony before the senate finance committee displayed some cracks in the administration’s armor, as a few Republicans joined Democrats with pointed questions about his posture toward vaccines – particularly the COVID-19 vaccine – and the firing of former CDC director Susan Monarez.
Kennedy spread vaccine misinformation during his testimony. He argued in defense of a statement made by Dr. Retsef Levi, a new appointee to a key vaccine panel, that mRNA vaccines present a risk of “serious harm, including death, especially among young people.” The scientific consensus today is that mRNA vaccines – including the Covid vaccine – only rarely have side effects and are both effective and safe.
Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) with a call to put Kennedy under oath, describing his testimony during his confirmation hearing as a lie.
Monarez told the Wall Street Journal that she was asked to pre-approve vaccine recommendations made by a panel now composed entirely of Kennedy allies, some of whom have openly argued against vaccination, after the secretary purged it of its previous expertise, and that her refusal led to her ouster. Kennedy repeatedly called that accusation a lie.
“I told her that she had to resign because I asked her, ‘Are you a trustworthy person?’ And she said, ‘no’.”
Wyden and several other Democrats called on Kennedy to resign, and for President Donald Trump to fire him if he wouldn’t quit.
Highlights:
“These changes were absolutely necessary adjustments to restore the agency to its role as the world’s gold standard public health agency with the central mission of protecting Americans from infectious disease.” The CDC “failed [its] responsibility miserably during Covid when its disastrous, nonsensical policies destroyed small businesses, violated civil liberties, closed our schools and caused generational damage in doing so, masked infants with no science and heightened economic inequality,” Kennedy testified. The “unscientific interventions failed to do anything about the disease itself.”
“Kennedy: “We literally did worse than any country in the world,” in preventing COVID-19 deaths “and the people at CDC who oversaw that process, who put masks on our children, who closed our schools, are the people who will be leaving.”
Kennedy: “It’s chronic disease that’s bankrupting us and destroying our national security.”
Melania Trump welcomed tech leaders to the East Wing of the White House to inaugurate a taskforce on artificial intelligence and education as part of her Presidential AI Challenge. The event concerned how to integrate artificial intelligence into childhood education and devise ways for the government to work more with the private sector.
“It’s a beautiful event today,” Trump said as she kicked off the meeting. “We are living in a world of wonder.”
Trump spoke about how driverless cars now “steer themselves through cities” and drones have become an everyday part of warfare. She said AI is responsible for all of these new technologies. “The robots are here, our future is no longer science fiction.”
Joining the First Lady at the meeting table were Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google and Alphabet, Cameron Wilson, the president of Code.org, and Arvind Krishna, the CEO of IBM. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, was also present in the gallery.
Kennedy had not visited CDC before shooting at Atlanta headquarters last month
Warnock earlier pushed Kennedy on the reported motives of the gunman who attacked the CDC headquarters in Atlanta last month, highlighting that the shooter believed that the Covid vaccine had made him ill, and wanted to raise awareness of that issue.
Warnock confirmed that Kennedy had never been to the agency before the shooting, and had not been briefed by any of its scientists about vaccines.
The New York Times notes: “Kennedy did visit the premises after the shooting, but no employees were present. Many CDC employees hold Kennedy directly responsible for the misinformation that may have led to the shooting.”
‘You are a hazard to the health of the American people’: Warnock calls on RFK Jr to resign
Democratic senator Raphael Warnock told Kennedy, “You are a hazard to the health of the American people” and called on him to step down.
“I think that you ought to resign, and if you don’t resign, the president of the United States, who put forward Operation Warp Speed, which worked, should fire you,” he said.
Challenged on his comments blaming school shootings on antidepressants, Kennedy went on the attack again: “I never said that, you’re making stuff up … you’re being dishonest right now.”
Democratic senator Tina Smith, of Minnesota, said they should be talking about mental health and access to guns.
Asked whether he was lying when he told the committee that he wasn’t anti-vaxx or if he was lying when he told Americans that there’s no safe and effective vaccine.
“Both things are true,” said Kennedy.
