PBS News Hour - Full Show - June 28, 2025 – PBS News Weekend full episode

Episode Date: June 28, 2025

Saturday on PBS News Weekend, a former top CDC vaccine expert explains why she resigned in protest. Europe’s top diplomat discusses the relationship with Trump and the path forward with Iran. How artificial intelligence is helping scientists track humpback whale migration patterns. Plus, the career and achievements of pioneering comedian and LGBTQ+ rights activist Robin Tyler. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Tonight on PBS News Weekend, a former top CDC vaccine expert explains why she resigned in protest and why she fears that changing vaccine recommendations could cost lives. Then how artificial intelligence is helping scientists track the wide-ranging migration patterns of humpback whales. And in our hidden history series, pioneering comedian and activist Robin, Robin, Tyler, who used humor to campaign for LGBT rights and fight homophobia. Humor is the razor-sharp edge of the truth. It's pain and anger made funny. So in order to make a joke, you have to believe in it. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.,'s influence on the government's approach to vaccines began to emerge this week when his hand-picked advisory panel held its first meeting. The committee pushed for a review of the entire childhood vaccine schedule, a reevaluation of hepatitis B vaccinations for babies, and walked back the long-standing recommendations for flu shots containing thimerosol, a preservative that's long been the target of anti-vaccine movement.

Earlier this month, Kennedy fired all 17 members of the vaccine panel, which is called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP. He then named eight new members, at least half of whom have expressed skepticism about some vaccines. That prompted the resignation of Dr. Fiona Havers, one of the CDC's leading vaccine experts. She discussed your decision with Ali Rogan. Dr. Havers, thank you so much for joining us. You've said that you contemplated resigning from me. your post several times since Secretary Kennedy was confirmed. Why is it that the dismissal of the

entire vaccine advisory panel really the last straw for you? The dismissal of the committee and the firing of the 17 experts was really the last straw for me because it really showed that they were planning on blowing up the whole process. I think that the ACIP recommendations process is very regimented and evidence-based. The committee is very carefully vetted. and when he just fired everyone on the committee and then replaced them with hand-picked people that many of whom are really not qualified to be on sitting on this committee, I had no faith anymore that this process would use scientific evidence to make informed policy decisions. So at this last meeting of this panel, they voted on something that had not been on the agenda,

the removal of the preservative thymarisol from vaccines. So what does this all mean to you in terms of the flouting of very well-established up until this point procedure with approving the childhood vaccine schedule and other norms. No, that's a great question. And it was really remarkable that they moved forward with this vote. I think historically, if there's going to be a vote on a policy proposal, it requires months of preparation, a formal process and a review of evidence by a work group that then presents to the voting members. What they did at this meeting was that they had a singles presentation from someone who introduced herself as a private citizen and then they moved forward immediately to a vote to change policy that potentially restricts

access to certain types of vaccines that have been previously viewed as safe and effective. And regardless of the topic of the vote, which is a separate question, the fact that they didn't follow any of these procedures for systematic review of the evidence that is the ACIP norms is very concerning. So the entire direction that this is heading, shows that RFK Jr. has taken over the ACIP and CDC recommendation process. And this is a really important process because if a vaccine is recommended by ACIP and officially added to the CDC immunization schedule, it determines whether insurance will cover it. In addition, ACIP votes on what's included in the vaccine for children's program, which provides free

vaccines to more than half of children in the United States. So what I'm seeing is a dismissal of the normal, very rigorous evidence-based process that ACIP usually goes through and basically RFK Jr. pushing forward an anti-vaccine agenda while bypassing all of the sort of normal, rigorous science-based processes that have been put in place to ensure transparency and good vaccine policy. You've said that one of the first alarm bells for you that led up to your decision to resign was the misleading citation that you see. say, of some data that you presented. I want to play a clip for you. This is the top FDA official comparing COVID hospitalization rates among young children versus older adults. This is cumulative

COVID-19 hospitalization by age, 50 to 64. It's approximately 55 per 100,000 over the last season. And 1 to 4 is 20 per 100,000. If you go down to 0 to 4, it's 30 per 100,000. How is this a misrepresentation of your data? So the problem is that he, lumped all children under four into the same age group and only presented hospitalization rates for zero to four or one to four as a group. But there's a huge difference in the risk of serious COVID disease in an infant compared to a healthy four-year-old. And these were precisely the data that the hospitalization system that I oversaw before I left CDC, which these numbers come from, were being evaluated by the COVID ACIFU work group for a much more nuanced discussion of

what COVID vaccination policy should be in children. And, you know, the following week after AENosis, they had this that showed that video, RFK Jr. announced on X, the CDC no longer recommended COVID vaccines for healthy children and healthy pregnant women. And so it's very possible that had this process been able to work itself out properly, the ACIP work group would have come to different recommendations about vaccinating a healthy baby who is, you know, six months of age or older, who is eligible for the primary vaccination series, they may have voted for something different for a healthy four-year-old who's had COVID before. So I think that they, you know, he presented data from the network that I was overseeing, but he missed all of the

nuance that we had been working to present to the ACIFU work group and then at the public meeting, which are important nuances when you're making vaccine policy from millions of children. Dr. Fiona Havers, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me on. In tonight's other news, senators are holding a rare Saturday session as they try to pass the tax and spending cuts bill by President Trump's Fourth of July deadline. Overnight, Senate Republican leaders unveiled their version of the bill. While the bulk of the measure remains the same as the House-passed version, key differences remain over how much the federal government will pay to fund Medicaid programs. The Senate also creates a $25 billion fund for rural hospitals to help offset reduced Medicaid compensation. Hundreds of thousands of mourners lying the streets of Tehran for the funeral of top military commanders and nuclear scientists killed in the 12-day war with Israel.

Their caskets were paraded through the city as mourners cursed Israel in the United States. Notably missing was Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has not been seen in public for weeks. In Gaza, Palestinian officials said overnight Israeli airstrikes killed at least 62 people. The strikes hit sites where displaced people were sheltering. a tent cap in southern Han Yunus, and a stadium in Gaza City. And in the West, residents searched for bodies and belongings in a blast crater. The attacks came after President Trump said on Friday that a ceasefire agreement could be reached within the next week. In Minneapolis, there was a funeral for former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark,

who were killed earlier this month and what authorities have called a politically motivated attack. Hundreds of mourners attended the private service in the Basilica of St. Mary. Among them, former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris. The Hortmans are survived by their two grown children, a son, and a daughter. The man accused of killing the Hortmans is also charged with the wounding state Senator John Hoffman and his wife. Still to come on PBS News Weekend, new technology that's tracking humpback whales across the globe. And the life, career, and achievements of comic Robin Tyler. News Weekend from the David M. Rubinstein studio at WETA in Washington, home of the PBS News Hour.

Weeknights on PBS. At this week's NATO summit in the Hague, President Trump declared what was, for him, unprecedented support for the alliance. And at the European Union Summit, leaders called for support for Ukraine and for diplomacy in the Middle East. In the Hague, Nick Schifrin sat down with Europe's top diplomat, to discuss the relationship with President Trump and the path forward with Iran. Kaya Kallas, thanks very much. Welcome back. Good to be here. Let me begin in the Middle East.

You've declared this is the moment for Iran and the national community to return to the negotiating table. But a U.S. official says that the deadlock that existed before Israel's campaign still exists. The U.S. is demanding that Iran not enriched domestically, and Iran is demanding that it does enrich domestically. So what's the way out? Which shows clearly that we need to talk. It is not only the nuclear that is worrying us, also the missile program, also Iran's attacks, cyber and hybrid attacks on European countries, also their support to Russia in the war against Ukraine. So diplomacy is the way. Can U.S. and Israeli military strikes alone end Iran's nuclear program?

Well, they certainly set it back, but you can't erase the know-how. need to have a clear agreement with Iran, because everybody agrees, at least in Europe, that Iran should not develop a nuclear weapon. Let's come here to the Hague, to the headline out of this summit, of course, is an agreement by 32 NATO countries to spend 3.5% of their GDP on weapons and 1.5% on defense-related items. That is a unanimous statement coming out of NATO. Does Europe believe that the U.S. will help defend the continent? Well, Article 5 is there. And this is the agreement by all the parties.

So we don't see any signs that the US is stepping away from this. I want to recall the only time that Article 5 was used was when America asked other allies to come to help. And the country that I'm from, Estonia, actually had more combat casualties per capita than Americans had. So I hope that this is, of course, also the other way around, that Article 5 applies to all member states, all allies. And so far, you know, America has been saying Article 5 is ironclad. You just use the word hope. Can Europe really make plans based on a hope? I immediately thought that was wrong.

So sorry. Sorry about that. No, I'm sure that America is with us because this is what all the allies have been saying. Article 5 is ironclad. There's also concern about how Donald. Trump sees Russia itself, whether the United States and Europe or United seen Russia as an adversary. President Trump once again said he wanted a deal with Russia. He wanted some kind of normalization with Russia. Can Europe make plans again for its future defense if the United States isn't

with it when it comes to its assessment on Russia's threat? Well, it is clear how Russia, Iran, more covertly also China, but North Korea are operating together. And that's why it is, of course, for us, also important to see that we put the pressure on Russia so that they would also want peace. I mean, over 100 days ago, Ukraine agreed to unconditional ceasefire. And remember, President Trump was very vocal about this, that, you know, ceasefire. And if you don't have that, then there are going to be consequences. But we haven't seen those consequences. We haven't seen those consequences, but the tools are there.

So definitely, I mean, if you compare the reactions and the push for ceasefire in Iran-Israel case, then we would also hope to see the same strength when it comes to Russia. Part of the pressure on Russia, of course, can be economic. The other part is, of course, militarily inside Ukraine. The Biden-era weapons are now beginning to run out, and the Trump administration hasn't given any indication. It wants to spend more money to rearm Ukraine. The EU, of course, is taking huge steps to try. and get more weapons, increased defense spending, increased production.

But that takes a while. Is Ukraine vulnerable until then? It is, of course, hard when it comes to weapons systems. We are doing more than we have done before. I mean, this year only we are already, the military support is like 24 billion euros, so there is still room to go. And finally this week, Finland, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, of course, all NATO and EU members are planning to leave a landmine

treaty to mine their borders with Russia to create a so-called iron curtain against Russia and Belarus. What does that say about the threat that Russia poses beyond Ukraine? It says that threat is real. So we really need to do everything to defend ourselves. And of course, all these means, I mean, we have been, all these countries have been part of the Ottawa Convention. The landmine treaty.

The landmine treaty. But we are in the situation. I think the threat that we see coming from Russia, that's why all these countries agreed to this. It shows that this is serious. Kai Akalas, thank you very much. Thank you. Humpback whales are some of the largest creatures on Earth

and live in every one of the planet's oceans. Their seasonal migrations are among the longest of any mammals. stretching thousands of miles as they travel between tropical breeding grounds and colder feeding grounds. Now scientists are using AI-powered facial recognition technology to track them on their journeys, offering new insights into their habits and their health. Even though adult humpback whales weigh as much as 40 tons and measure up to 60 feet long, that's longer than a school bus, they can be dwarfed by the vast open waters of the oceans. For decades, scientists tracked them by comparing photographs of their distinctive tails.

Marine biologist Ted Cheeseman. Much like a face shows recognition features, right? The size of my nose, the size of my chin, all that sort of thing. Underside of a humpback whale's tail has patterns and shapes and scars that make them individually recognizable. Sifting through the thousands of. photographs from a month-long research voyage could take up to a year. So Chiesman turned to image recognition technology to do the same thing at about two days. He built a website called Happy Whale, where photographs can be uploaded and analyzed. To date, scientists and the general

public have submitted more than one million photos, creating a global catalog of more than 100,000 individual whales. Each new data point provides more insight into the whale's movements. It's hard to grasp the scale of a whale or creature that can just casually swim from Alaska to Mexico or Hawaii every season just to find a mate and then swim back and not feed the entire time, three, four months without eating at all. That's pretty hard to grasp. But this gets us a little closer to being able to see that. Researchers discovered that a whale first seen in 2013 off the coast of Colombia in South America was spotted nine years later. on the other side of the globe, near Zanzibar, off Eastern Africa. Tourists flock to the waters where whales congregate for a glimpse of these awesome creatures. Sometimes they're just like breathing and we're all like, you know, and they're just like,

and we're like, oh my gosh. Cecilia Ruiz runs whale watching expeditions in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. They are super important for our oceans and they're super important. for just the planet health in general. I feel like we are sometimes disconnected with nature, with living our regular lives. She uses Happy Whale to tell her clients the stories of the whales they see.

If you tell them like, oh, this is a specific whale came here, had their baby, and then they saw them in Canada, and then you tell them these stories. And I feel like people engage more with the whales and see them more as individuals other than just understanding. animal that it's migrating.

She calls it Facebook for whales. I get notifications still like, hey, the whale you saw on January, it's now here, you know? About a third of the images on Happy Whale are contributed by the public. Earlier this year, a tourist on a whale watching cruise in Hawaii uploaded a photograph of what turned out to be the world's oldest known humpback whale, called Old Timer, the male was first identified by a scientist in 1972, making him at least 53 years old. Crowdsourcing whale tracking has been a boon for scientists like Ted Cheeseman. We're able to actually see, thanks to the public's involvement, quite a lot more resolution with the science.

With it, they can monitor how whales are coping with the threats posed by warming seas, being struck by ships and entangled in long lines used by commercial fishermen. Scientists use that information to model population growth and even estimate the survival rate of individual whales. Commercial whaling decimated the humpback whales population in the 19th and 20th centuries. It's recovered thanks to conservation efforts,

which can be supported by the data happy whale generates. And Cheeseman says the public awareness the website generates is a benefit in itself. We published a lot of research papers as a result of the data that's flowing through this. And I think that's really meaningful and worthwhile. But I think the publicly engaging side of it, the fact that this brings us closer to a very impressive

and rather magical and hard to understand element of the natural world is probably what I'm most proud of. And finally tonight, as Pride Month wraps up, a look at a pioneering LGBTQ comedian and activist. In 1979, Robin Tyler became the first out lesbian comic to appear on national television. She used both her humor and her platform to become an important voice in the push for LGBTQ rights and equality. This is part of our series, Hidden Histories. Robin, thanks for joining us. You were born on the prairie of Manitoba in Winnipeg.

How did you get into show business from there? I moved to New York when I was 19 or 20. I emigrated here. And you had to sign something saying you weren't a communist, you weren't a drug addict, or you weren't a homosexual. So I signed it because I wasn't a homosexual. I was a lesbian. And I moved to New York to break into show business.

And I went to a dragball and I got arrested. They raided it. And I got arrested for female. impersonation. So they took me to jail and all the queens. Oh, she's a girl. And the cops. That's what you all call each other. So they finally let me go because a newspaper person came to look at me. And I ended up going to the 82 club and becoming a female impersonator. And I did Judy Garland. Only in those days you had to do the real voice. You couldn't lip sings. So I ended up being becoming one of the most famous female impersonators.

What was the comedy scene like for an out comedian back then? Well, you know, I started working out at the comedy store and it was very difficult. It wasn't just a matter of being out, but the jokes in the 70s

and 80s were all these sexist and misogynist jokes. So I became a comic with my partner, Pat Harrison. We became a comedy team and we took all of our jokes that men did on women and we did them on men. And guess what we found out?

Men didn't have a sense of humor. So when men do jokes on women, it's called funny. But when women did jokes on men, it was called anti-male. So that's kind of how we started out. Comedy has always reflected the civil rights movement. In the 60s, when the black civil rights movement was prevalent, we went from Flip Wilson. All of a sudden, Richard Pryor started telling the truth, right?

In the 70s, Women's Liberation, so you had great comics like Elaine Boozer and Lotus Wine Stock. And then in the 80s, the Gay Liberation Movement came out. The first March in Washington was 1979. And so all of a sudden, gays always did humor, but the humor that was done on us was making us the object rather than the subject of humor. And all of a sudden, we came up and we could do humor. and I did my first comedy album called Always a Bridesmaid, Never a Groom, which is about coming out to my mother. And so, you know, when we started to do jokes that were about us rather than on us,

we started getting laughs, but it wasn't easy. How did you make that move from being an entertainer to be an activist? The Women's Liberation Movement came along, and Pat Harrison and I were a comedy team. Women didn't have sports scholarships, so we went on to the, the field during a Rams Raider football game. And we ran. It was very hard to run on a football field. And we called for more sports scholarships for women. And we got on like the front pages all over. Patty and I were able to use comedy as part of our activism. Even now when I speak at the marches, I always do humor first and then I do a speech. And the comedy disarms people.

humor is the razor-sharp edge of the truth. It's pain and anger made funny. So in order to make a joke, you have to believe in it. How would you like to be remembered as a great comic or a great activist? Well, I don't want to be remembered because I don't want to die. But I guess if I were to describe myself, you know, both go ahead. I'm not one without the other. So I guess what I really was was the laughing warrior.

I don't come from anger. I come from loving, loving freedom, loving equality. Because if you're just angry all the time, all you're going to do is burn yourself out and chase everybody away. That's not how you change hearts and minds. You know what I've always said? I'm very lucky in my life because passion is better than Prozac. Very good. Robin Tyler, happy pride. Thank you very much. Well, thank you. And that is PBS News Weekend for this Saturday. I'm John Yang for all of my colleagues. Thanks for joining us. See you tomorrow.