WSJ What’s News - RFK Jr. Is Confirmed as Health Secretary

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

P.M. Edition for Feb. 13. Senators voted to confirm vaccine critic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services secretary. WSJ reporter Liz Essley Whyte tells us how Kennedy overcame senators’ skepticism to win their votes. Plus, voters’ frustration with inflation helped Donald Trump win the White House; WSJ chief economics commentator Greg Ip joins us to talk about why getting rid of inflation might now be a challenge for the president. And President Trump signs a memo ordering federal agencies to study reciprocal tariffs. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Rise to rewards with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. Terms and conditions apply. Rise to rewards with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. Terms and conditions apply. RFK Jr. overcomes Senator skepticism and becomes head of Health and Human Services. Plus, voters' frustration with inflation helped Donald Trump win the White House. Now, he might struggle to get rid of it.

The problem now is that same set of policies that were relatively benign eight years ago are less benign today. They will have effects on psychology and possibly on interest rates. And why people who appeal claims denied by health insurers often win. It's Thursday, February 13th. I'm Alex Osela for The Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move

the world today. [♪ critic of vaccines and the medical establishment in charge of the country's vast and powerful health apparatus. The vote was 52 to 48, with every Democrat as well as Republican Senator Mitch McConnell voting against Kennedy, who is himself a former Democrat. Our reporter Liz Esley-White covered this from Washington, D.C., and told me about Kennedy's efforts to garner congressional support before the vote. He met with more than 64 senators. He was really hoping for both Democrats and Republicans to vote for him, but didn't get any Democratic votes. With Elon Musk's Doge efforts ramping up, Democrats really decided that they couldn't vote yes on these nominees and got more strident in their willingness to reject them.

And he told Republicans and others that he wasn't anti-vaccine, that he didn't come to this job with a big anti-vaccine agenda, despite having worked on that issue for the past 20 years, and that he really just wants to see good science and is hoping to make that a cornerstone of his Make America Healthy Again agenda. Do these reassurances tie his hands at all? There are still some things that Kennedy could do. He could add more of his allies from his days as a vaccine activist to certain boards that

set the schedule for vaccination. He could change the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program to include more injuries or more vaccines, the set of plaintiffs lawyers that do that work. And he's kind of hinted at a perhaps a vaccine safety commission of some sort to review all the studies that exist and to fund new studies into things that public health officials say are already proven. In other cabinet news, the vote for Trump's pick to lead the say are already proven. In other cabinet news, the vote for Trump's pick to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Cash Patel, will advance to the full Senate.

And the president's choice for Education Secretary Linda McMahon had her confirmation hearing today. We'll be talking more about her and Trump's promise to shut down the Education Department this weekend on the next episode of What's New Sunday. In other news, President Trump has signed a memo directing federal agencies to study how to adjust U.S. tariff rates to reflect the duties imposed by other countries. But the order stopped short of actually imposing the tariffs immediately, as many foreign capitals had feared.

Commerce Secretary nominee Howard Lutnick said the studies should be completed by April 1st. Investors were excited about Trump's memo. Major U.S. stock indexes were up today, gaining in the afternoon. The Dow rose about 0.8 percent, the S&P 500 ticked up roughly 1 percent% and the NASDAQ gained 1.5%. Israel and Hamas have agreed to resolve a dispute that threatened to derail their fragile ceasefire. Humanitarian equipment began entering Gaza today and mediators said that Hamas agreed to release the next three hostages that it had threatened to withhold. Israel hasn't yet commented. In Germany, at least 28 people were injured when a car hit a crowd in a suspected attack in Munich. German police say they detained an Afghan refugee as a suspect. The incident is likely to feed into

a debate around immigration and crime that's dominated the campaign for the German election, which takes place in less than two weeks. Los Angeles residents are bracing for a powerful storm closing in on the city. Thousands of people in places like Topanga and Malibu were under evacuation orders or warnings ahead of possible mudslides or flash floods made worse by the recent wildfires. And longtime federal prosecutor Danielle Sassoon resigned today, days after the Justice Department ordered her office to drop criminal charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. A spokesman for the office confirmed her departure.

Coming up, can Trump advance his economic agenda and also cut inflation? That's after the break. [♪THEME MUSIC PLAYING [♪THEME MUSIC PLAYING Americans' frustration with inflation helped get Trump elected president. Well, as we've talked about a lot on the show this week, that inflation seems to be sticking around. According to the Labor Department, last month prices were up 3% from the year before. And some economists predict that if Trump does some of the things he says he'll do, it could keep inflation running hot instead of cooling it down.

Greg Ip, chief economics commentator at the Journal, has been keeping an eye on this. Greg, what are some of Trump's planned moves that could have an impact on inflation? Well, there's a few things. The most prominent part of the agenda, which will have an effect on the inflation outlook, is tariffs. This week, he said he was imposing a 25% tariff on imported steel and aluminum. We did see steel prices go up as a result. People are anticipating other tariffs. We saw copper prices go up as a result. He's now talking about a reciprocal tariff, which is every country will be hit with a tariff that he judges to be roughly equivalent to whatever they're imposing on the United States. There's a few other things in the background as well. There's a big budget plan underway right now in Congress, and there's a

conversation that's going on between Republicans and the president. They want to cut taxes by a lot, four and a half trillion dollars, possibly more. Now they say they're going to pay for that with spending cuts, but they're a little bit less clear on the spending cuts than they are on the tax cuts. If they end up cutting taxes more than they cut spending, that could impart additional oomph to the economy and once again make it harder to get inflation down. Tariffs, lower taxes, I mean, Trump did this stuff

in his first term too, right? Like, and inflation didn't increase a dramatic amount. Is that just because it was lower to start with, around 2%? Yeah, if you think about the period before the pandemic, it was still that kind of like weak global environment that followed the financial crisis of about 15 years ago. And all around the world, inflation was low, there was no pricing power, wages were weak, interest rates were stuck at zero. It was just a very different global environment. And you could argue that when Trump raised tariffs

and cut taxes, you know, adding a little bit of inflationary gas to the economy, that in a sort of like weird way kind of helped because it made it easier to get inflation up to the Fed's 2% target. Here you have a situation where he inherits inflation. And I wanna be clear about that. He didn't cause this inflation

He inherited it. The problem now is that same set of policies that were relatively benign eight years ago are less benign today They will have effects on psychology and possibly on interest rates. I don't want to overstate any of that For example, the effect on inflation of tariffs should be just kind of like a one-shot deal The prices go up and then they stop going up and so a year from now, you don't see that effect persisting. But if it changes the psychology of people, that could actually have sort of a self-sustaining momentum to it. So if Trump isn't successful in lowering inflation as he has promised, what could that mean for him politically? One thing I want our listeners to always understand is that things like economic growth and unemployment

and inflation are these big macroeconomic phenomena that have many, many drivers. We tend to focus on the things that are most relevant, whether it's tariffs or taxes or oil prices. And even though most Americans do worry that tariffs will raise prices, that doesn't yet manifest itself as a major negative for his agenda. So right now he has maneuvering room. But I think the issue is that while people are certainly going to agree that the inflation we have now is in no way caused by Trump, the longer time goes on, the more the economy

we have is the Trump economy. And he kind of owns whatever it is that people see out there. And if they're not seeing relief on interest rates, like mortgage rates are still stuck at 7%, if they're not seeing the promised decline in grocery prices and energy prices, at a certain point they start to hold Trump responsible for that. They definitely acknowledge there's a problem here. They're taking small steps to deal with immediate crises like the avian flu that's devastating chicken flocks and driving up the price of eggs.

Trump is very fixated on the price of oil. He's trying to press Saudi Arabia to increase output. He's hoping that that will yield some results on energy prices. But over the long term, the overall thrust of the Trump agenda is sort of like to unleash animal spirits, as we say, like get business to invest more, reduce regulations,

which get in the way of investment and productivity. That's their sort of like their long-term formula for getting inflation down. That was WSJ Chief Economics Commentator, Greg Ip. Thanks so much, Greg. Thanks for having me. Several major publishers, including The Atlantic, Politico, and Vox, are suing the AI startup Cohere for copyright and trademark infringement.

They say the Canadian company improperly used at least 4,000 copyrighted works to train its large language model, and that it displayed large portions of or entire articles for users while bypassing visits to the publisher's websites. A spokesman for Cohere said the company has controls that mitigate the risk of IP infringement. INTRO And finally, every year in the U.S., health insurers deny about 850 million payment claims out of the more than 5 billion they process. That's according to data from the health policy nonprofit KFF.

But the few patients who appeal those denied claims are often successful. Studies show that insurers grant up to three-quarters of claim appeals. So why don't more patients and their families mount appeals of their own? WSJ reporter Julie Wernau, who writes about health and medicine, told our Your Money Briefing podcast that the process itself, which can involve hours of phone calls and dense paperwork, can be daunting. The idea of having to sort out an appeal process for an insurer can be enough of a barrier that a lot of people don't even try.

What I found is that the people who were successful left no stone unturned. If you rely on your doctor to be the one to do this appeal process, which I think most people do, you might be surprised to learn that you have better luck when you do it yourself. Insurers say that to remain solvent, they have to decide which crises deserve reimbursement and which don't.

But you can hear more about patients who fought back, and won, on today's episode of our Your Money Reefing podcast. And that's what's news for this Thursday afternoon. Today's show was produced by Pierre Bienamay and Anthony Bansi, with supervising producer Yolanda McBride and deputy editor Chris Sinzley. I'm Alex Osila for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening.