Up First from NPR - RFK Jr. Testifies Before Senate, Fed Confirmation Hearing, Harvard's Legal Victory

Episode Date: September 4, 2025

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will testify in the Senate today following a week of upheaval at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A Senate committee holds a hearing on President Trump’s nominee to fill a vacant seat on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. And, a federal judge in Boston has handed Harvard University a win, ruling the Trump administration unlawfully froze billions of dollars in research funds. Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.Today’s episode of Up First was edited by Diane Webber, Rafael Nam, Lauren Migaki, Lisa Thomson and Alice Woelfle. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Neisha Heinis. And our technical director is Carleigh Strange.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies before the Senate today. The hearing is meant to be about the president's health agenda, but it comes on the heels of upheaval at the CDC. So what are lawmakers expected to ask about? I'mi Martinez. That is Michelle Martin, and this is up first from NPR News. President Trump wants to install more of his own people at the Federal Reserve. We'll have a majority very shortly, so that'll be great. Once we have a majority, housing is going to swing and it's going to be great.

A Senate committee hearing to fill a vacant seat on the Fed's governing board could get the president one step closer reaching that majority. And a federal judge in Boston has handed Harvard University a legal victory, ruling the Trump administration's freeze on funding to the university unlawful. Stay with us. We'll give

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on Pop Culture Happy Hour. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will be testifying in the Senate today after a week of upheaval at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Last week, Kennedy pressured the brand new CDC director, Susan Menaris, to resign. And when she refused, the White House fired her. Then three top CDC officials resigned in protest. NPR, Selina Simmons-Duffin,

is here to tell us what to expect at the hearing today. So, Selena, technically, this hearing is not about the turnover of leadership of the CDC. Right. This is the Senate Finance Committee hearing announced last week to go over the president's 2026 health care agenda. Okay.

So that's the stated topic. But what do you think senators might ask Secretary Kennedy about? Yeah. I'm expecting it's going to be like a lot of hearings in recent years where there's kind of a split screen depending on the party of the senator doing the questioning. When Democrats are asking the questions, I think they're going to hammer Kennedy about what happened last week at CDC and about vaccine policy. Kennedy has replaced a key vaccine advisory panel with his own hand-picked roster of people

who have a history of anti-vaccine activism. They are set to shake up recommendations on a variety of vaccines later this month. Several Democratic lawmakers, a variety of public health groups, and more than a thousand current and former HHS employees have all called on Kennedy to resign in the last few days. And some Democratic states are now making moves to try and run public health without relying on CDC, given all of the chaos there. Yesterday, California, Washington, and Oregon launched the West Coast Health Alliance to coordinate their own health guidance and vaccine recommendations. Okay, so that's what you expect to hear from Democrats. What about Republicans?

Republicans are moving in the opposite direction. Florida announced plans to end all vaccine mandates for children and adults yesterday. I think Republican senators will talk a lot about Kennedy's Make America Healthy Again agenda. He's been traveling all around the country with governors who are signing state laws related to some of his food-related priorities, like limiting food dyes and ultra-processed foods. There may be Republicans asking about the drastic cuts in biomedical research funding. I think a lot of people are really going to be wondering what Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana is going to say in this hearing in particular. Ooh, Bill Cassidy. Why him? Why is that? Well, Cassidy is a physician. He chairs the Health Committee, which oversees HHS, and he believes strongly in vaccines. Kennedy won Cassidy's vote by promising he wouldn't change that CDC vaccine advisory panel. Obviously, Kennedy broke that promise. He fired everyone on that committee and replaced them. So I'll be watching to see whether Cassidy is going to call Kennedy out for all of the aggressive changes he's been making when it comes to vaccine policy.

What do you expect to hear from Kennedy? Well, you know, in interviews over the last week, he seemed kind of unbothered by the upheaval at CDC. He wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend defending his actions. And in the piece, he places the blame for the high COVID-19 deaths in those early years of the pandemic squarely on CDC. Even though I think you could argue that politics and incomplete information about an emerging virus deserve a fair share of the blame. I know what he wants to talk about are his maha effort. and what he calls the chronic disease epidemic. So I think he's going to try to keep that the focus as much as possible.

All right. That's NPR, Selena Simmons-Stuff. And thanks a lot. Thank you. President Trump is trying to exert more control over the Federal Reserve. One test of that effort will come this morning when a Senate committee holds a hearing on Trump's nominee to fill a vacant seat on the Fed's governing board. Trump is also.

hoping to fill a second seat by getting rid of Fed Governor Lisa Cook. That move is being challenged in court. The potential shake-up at the Fed is seen as a serious threat to the central bank's independence. NPR chief economics correspondent Scott Horace is with us now to tell us more about this. Good morning, Scott. Good morning. Scott, what are the stakes here? Is this mainly about Trump wanting lower interest rates? Interest rates are certainly part of the story, but more broadly, this is about power and who gets to control decision-making at the Federal Reserve. has made no secret of the fact he wants lower borrowing cost, and he's likely to get that wish when policymakers meet in a couple of weeks. That's because the job market is showing signs of

softening, and lower interest rates might help to cushion that a little bit. But Trump wants more. He wants to install more of his own people at the central bank. He's nominated a White House Economic Advisor, Stephen Myron, to fill one vacancy on the Fed's board. And if he's successful in pushing Fed Governor Lisa Cook aside, he'll get a chance to put another ally. on the board. That would mean four out of seven Fed governors would be Trump appointees. And the president told reporters last week he's looking forward to that. We'll have a majority very shortly, so that'll be great. Once we have a majority, housing is going to swing and it's going to be great. People are paying too high an interest rate.

Now, two caveats. One, the Fed does not directly control mortgage rates. Those are set in the bond market, so this move could actually backfire if investors come to think a Trump-dominated Fed might let inflation get out of control. And two, Congress set up the Fed to be insulated from exactly this kind of political pressure from the White House. So, Scott, what's your sense of how this is going to play out? Right now, the fight's being waged on two fronts. One's in the courts where Lisa Cook has filed a lawsuit to prevent the president from firing her from the Fed board. Trump and his allies have accused Cook of mortgage fraud, but Cook denies that and says that's just a pretext to muscle her off the board. while that's being sorted out in the courts, the Senate has a chance to weigh in.

We will hear in particular, if any Senate Republicans stand up for Fed independence. They have done so in the past. We will see if they're willing to challenge the president this time. Is Fent independence likely to come up at today's confirmation hearing? Yeah, I'm sure we'll hear a lot of questions, at least from Democrats on the committee. Trump's nominee, Stephen Meyer, and co-authored a paper last year in which he argued the president should have more control over the Fed's Board of Gundy. governors. Now, he also suggested a ban on people moving from the White House to the Fed, although obviously that is not in effect right now. Most other advanced economies have decided it's a good

idea to insulate their central banks from meddling by politicians. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell says it just makes for better long-term decision-making. If you were not to have that, it would be a great temptation, of course, to use interest rates to affect elections, for example. And that's something that we don't want to do. Powell's own term as Fed chairman runs out next May, and at that time, Trump will have the opportunity to name a new chairman. Powell could remain on the board as a Fed governor, however, through 2028. So far, the Fed chairman has not said whether he plans to stick around that long. That is NPR Scott.

Horsley, Scott, thank you. You're welcome. A federal judge in Boston handed Harvard University a big win on Wednesday. The judge says the Trump administration unlawfully froze more than $2 billion in research funding to the school. The administration put the freeze in place in what it says was a response to allegations of anti-Semitism on campus, which prompted Harvard to sue. NPR education correspondent Corey Turner has been looking over the judge's 84-page ruling, and it's with us now to tell us more about it. Corey, good morning. Good morning, Michelle.

So what can you tell us about how the funding for use, according to the judge, ran afoul of the law? Yeah, Judge Allison Burroughs offered really not one argument, but several. For starters, she pointed out that the research being defunded at Harvard included studies of Alzheimer's, Cancer, Lou Gehrig's disease, heart disease, autism. There was even a study to help emergency room doctors better serve suicidal veterans, none of which, the judge said, had any clear connection to anti-Semitism on campus. Burroughs also said the freeze violated Harvard's First Amendment rights, and that's because at the same time the Trump administration claimed it was doing this to fight anti-Semitism, President Trump was excoriating Harvard more broadly on truth social for being a, quote, liberal mess, and for fighting back against the administration. So the judge said, she found it, quote,

difficult to conclude anything other than that the administration used anti-Semitism. as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically motivated assault. You know, Corey, it's interesting. Harvard has said that anti-Semitism had become a problem on campus. Does the judge speak to that? Yeah, interruling judge boroughs was kind of hard on Harvard, saying, quote, it had been plagued by anti-Semitism in recent years and could and should have done a better job of dealing with the issue. But she said Harvard was already taking steps to do just that when the Trump administration froze its funding. In fact, this was actually another way the administration, she said, had run a foul of federal

law. It had accused Harvard of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the landmark law that protects Americans from discrimination based on race, color, and national origin. But Title VI requires a very clear step-by-step process for the government to follow to bring a school into compliance. And the judge said, jumping straight to this huge. huge funding freeze, essentially skipped most of those steps. So what happens now?

Well, White House spokesperson Liz Houston said, quote, we will immediately move to appeal this egregious decision, and we're confident we will ultimately prevail. Meanwhile, Harvard President Alan Garber's statement was notably subdued, pledging to, quote, continue to assess the implications of the opinion, monitor further legal developments, and be mindful of the changing landscape. And I think, Michelle, that's a nod to the fact that Harvard and the White House have been battling on multiple fronts here, while also talking behind the scenes about a potential settlement agreement, like the ones already signed by Columbia and Brown University. It's hard to know what effect this ruling is ultimately going to have, but I think it's pretty clear it strengthens Harvard's bargaining position.

That is NPR education correspondent, Corey Turner. Corey, thank you. You're welcome, Michelle. And that's up first for Thursday, September 4th. I'm Michelle Martin. And I'm May Martinez. Consider this could be your next listen. It's from NPR. We hear it up first, give you the three big stories of the day,

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